


Somewhere between Faust and Flood

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: A Very Charloe Christmas 2015, F/M, no blackout au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 13:05:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5586721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie smiles absently at their banter, but she’s not really paying attention now.  The mystery Professor has just been upgraded to the sexy Professor, and she’s busy embroidering fantasies of eloquent words dripping in her ear as her senses sing with the scent of old books and the creak of a leather sofa.  She has to swallow a lustful moan – just the idea of a man with his own library makes her knees go weak.  Fool, she thinks.  He’s Dad’s age.  Old as balls.  And the library thing is probably the same as those middle-aged men who drive a Porsche or a Ferrari.  Probably compensating for something.   </p><p>(In which Charlie discovers Professor Monroe has not a single thing he needs to compensate for.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mothers of Invention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ILuvMyThesaurus (ImLuvinMyThesaurus)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImLuvinMyThesaurus/gifts).



> I’ve been wanting to write Professor Bass for a while.  Somehow, this decided to coincide with an angst-free Christmas at the Mathesons, all family members accounted for, no ghosts lurking anywhere.  Just a traditional Christmas, and a non-traditional Christmas gift: my have-a-very-happy-Charloe-Christmas present for thessie, iluvmythesaurus.

 

***

“ _You_ have a friend who is a _Professor_?” Charlie asks, so obviously sceptical that Miles scowls, offended.

“Yes! I can even hold a conversation with them, as long as we talk about things that go bang,” her uncle drawls sarcastically.  “Jesus, Charlie.”

It’s not that she thinks Uncle Miles is dumb, or anything.  Her Dad is always bragging about how he’s some military genius, but she’s met some of his friends over the years, and they all fit a certain mould.  Short hair.  Straight backs.  Buff.

Keen to chase her around the table, and yeah, maybe she’s let a few of them catch her.  The muscles can be nice, as long as they don’t talk.  But this is the whole of Christmas they’re talking about – their special Matheson dinner on Christmas Eve, one gift per person from under the tree, and another with special coffees on Christmas morning.  How will she and her Mom and Danny be able to prepare Christmas lunch in their traditionally sozzled state with a stranger around?  They won’t, she suspects.  Mom is already wearing her company smile just talking about the guy.

“How is Bass these days?” she coos, and Charlie can’t decide whether her mother wants to murder the mystery Professor or marry him.  “I can’t believe we haven’t seen him since … well.  Such sad occasions.  It’ll be wonderful to have him close again, won’t it darling?”

“Have who close?” Charlie’s father mumbles, most of his attention taken up by the giant box he’s trying to manouevre into the room.

“Dickhead,” Miles grunts without looking up from the strings of lights he’s sorting.

“Did he get that house he was after?”

“River North? Yeah. Paid way too much but apparently it had lots of shelves.  Bookshelves? Something about a library?”

“Sounds like Bass.  Sweet revenge really.”

“The nerd thing?” Miles asks with a sly grin, and her father rolls his eyes.

“Yeah.  He was worse than you were, the little shit,” her Dad says fondly.

Charlie smiles absently at their banter, but she’s not really paying attention now.  The mystery Professor has just been upgraded to the sexy Professor, and she’s busy embroidering fantasies of eloquent words dripping in her ear as her senses sing with the scent of old books and the creak of a leather sofa.  She has to swallow a lustful moan – just the idea of a man with his own library makes her knees go weak.  Fool, she thinks.  He’s Dad’s age.  Old as balls.  And the library thing is probably the same as those middle-aged men who drive a Porsche or a Ferrari.  Probably compensating for something.   A Professor, though …

“Ow!”

Her Dad grimaces as he tries to manoeuver the huge box carefully labelled ‘decorations’ around her. “Sorry, sweetheart. Can’t see my feet.  Was that your toe?”

“And the rest,” she mutters, but there’s no time to complain – he’s already on a collision course with his next disaster, the strings of lights Miles has laid out to check.  She quickly swoops the giant box out of her father’s arms and dumps it on the couch, groaning at the weight.

 “That weighs a damn ton.  Weren’t we going to sort out the ornaments last year, Mom?”

“I did!  There were lots of old baubles that I threw out, and an angel or two that had to be sent to its Maker, but …” her mother trails off, blushing.

“Tell me you threw out the kiddie stuff.”

“You and Danny made those ornaments and gave them to us with so much love!’

“Twenty years ago, Mom.  I bought you a crystal dove from Lalique last year and you still want to hang the one I made in kindergarden?”

“Yes,” her mother sniffs, the picks up her conversation with Miles again to change the topic. “Please tell Bass we insist he joins us for Christmas, and we have plenty of room for him here until his house is ready to move in.”

Miles snorts.

“Pretty sure he’s already sleeping there, even though his stuff isn’t here yet.  Said something about a mattress on the floor and living on takeout the way we did back in the day.  He’s got two truckloads of stuff arriving from Philly between Christmas and New Year.  Mostly boxes of books, I’ll bet.  Nerd.”

God forbid someone doesn’t have biceps for brains and spend all their spare time on the shooting range, Charlie thinks disparagingly.   She quells the flash of guilt – she had quite enjoyed her dates with Jason, even if he had never managed to figure out that Miles had taught her to shoot when she was 10 – and focuses on the present.

The nerd.

“What field is he in?”

“History. Military.  Civil War, mostly.  Why?” Miles raises an eyebrow.

“Just – you know. Professional interest.  Wondered how he sorts them, that’s all.  I am a librarian, Uncle Miles.”

“Huh.  So you are.”

Charlie is too busy separating out the ornaments to notice the thoughtful tone to her uncle’s voice.  Nor does she see the long appraisal of her pyjama clad form, or the glint in his eyes that tells of a plan in the making.

So she’s completely unprepared when it happens.  Not to mention, outraged.

Because she when she finally meets Professor Monroe, he’s not the adorably rumpled intellectual she’d spun sweet fantasies around.  He’s an Adonis escaped from the catwalks of Milan, and she’d done a last minute grocery run in her Dad’s garden coat, Danny’s old sweatpants and her Class of 2010 tee from high school. She had forgotten her key and her hands had been so full that she’d been forced to kick at the door and pray someone was close enough to hear the dull thuds.  Not her most mature moment, and of course it was Miles who opened the door. 

She didn’t see the man looming in the candlelit glow behind him, too busy pulling her most outrageous face to combat her sarcastic uncle’s inevitable quirked eyebrow.  She’d even stuck out her tongue out for good measure.  Miles just rolled his eyes in response, but the golden-curled Adonis standing next to him stared, aghast.

“Bass, this is my niece, Charlie.  She’s four,” Miles had smirked.  “Charlie – Bass Monroe.  Professor of something boring over at Harvard.”

“History,” she remembered aloud.  “You said history.”

“Like I said, something boring,” Miles wrinkled his nose in mock distaste.  “Okay, brother, now that we’ve rescued the kid, let’s go find some whiskey.”

“It’s barely noon,” Monroe had scolded, ignoring the introduction to steer her favourite uncle away without a backward look.  Not that she’d wanted him to.  Not at all. 

Even if his golden curls had seemed to glow in the half-light of their hall, and the width of his chest under the silk-knit sweater left her mouth dry.  Even if her heart was pounding so hard it drowned out her Mom’s dreadful Christmas music, and made her head spin.

It’s pure outrage, she tells herself, that has left her shaking.  Astonishment at just how _rude_ he was, ignoring her like that, not to mention shaming Miles for his drinking. Arrogant, presumptuous, supercilious asshole … it’s hate at first sight, she decides, and by the time they sit down to Christmas dinner that night, she’s well on her way to believing it.

They are making nice over pre-dinner drinks when she realises his eyes never rest on her for long; when conversation forces him to look at her, he clenches his jaw so hard that his blinding smile has to be fake.  All through her father’s ceremonial carving of the turkey, Miles’ atrocious annual speech, Danny’s lively account of his first year at College and Rachel’s ridiculous obvious attempt to find out whether Bass was seeing anyone, Charlie’s internal monologue is a vicious litany of his faults.  He’s too charming.  Overly polite.  Technophobe.  Cubs fan. (She tries not to include ‘obnoxiously goodlooking’ but it creeps in every time.) 

All gloss and no substance, she fumes, as he grins at Rachel and trades stories with Miles.

His eyes rest heavy on her face every time she makes an effort to participate, and something in them makes her stomach flip with nervousness.  He’s patronising her, she decides after one too many pointed questions about her college experience.  That, and he keeps making veiled references to “young people” and “you kids” and “back in our day, Miles,” and she wants to tell him to shut the fuck up because she’s not a kid.

 “Pass the potatoes, please,” she simpers through gritted teeth, and tries not to snap at the wide, white smile she gets in return.

“Sure.  Were you one of the cooks, Charlotte, or are these all Rachel’s creations?” 

“Potatoes? Nope, we got them at the market,” she snapped, before closing her eyes in mortification.  “I’m sorry, that was rude.  We let Mom do the hard stuff and Danny and I did the easy things together – the ham, potatoes, gravy, that sort of thing.  Dad does all the sweet stuff,” she smiles across the table at her beaming father.

“I guess those two doctorates come in handy in the kitchen,” Monroe jokes, and she wants to stab him.  Right through the heart, so she can watch the blood stain grow on that ridiculously snowy white shirt.  Who changes into a tuxedo for Christmas dinner, anyway?

Professor Monroe, apparently.  “I haven’t seen Rachel since the wedding, so I thought I’d get another use out of the damn tuxedo you guys made me buy,” he had winked, his marble-hewn face breaking into a smile so beautiful it left Charlie about to snap the stem of her wineglass.

Her Mom had actually laughed, and said something facetious that sounded too much like flirting for Charlie’s liking.   Not that it could ever go anywhere - they’d be like the Bobbsey twins, she thinks viciously.  Too much blonde control-freak in one place.

She’s not sure why she knows he is a control freak, but it’s probably something to do with the overly clipped diction, or the rigid set of his shoulders.  Funny, really.  You’d swear he was the soldier with that ramrod back, rather than Miles slouching down the other end of the table.  Monroe would probably shit himself if a car backfired outside, Charlie amuses herself by thinking.

Her Dad is too polite to slap him down for the insult, just salutes him with a fond grin that makes Charlie want to shake him.  This guy is a snake, she wants to scream. He flirts with your wife right in front of you!  His jokes are so bitter and world-weary!  He thinks the Dewey Decimal System is the best way to organise a specialist library!

They nearly come to blows over pudding.

“It’s my library, Charlotte.  I know how I like it, and three level subject sorting has served me well in the past,” he sniffs, tone cool.

The forbidding cast of his face should make him less handsome, not more, she despairs.  “But you said you had a lot of new material coming in – some sort of bequest?” she argues, unable to help herself. “Your categories will be so broad, how can the metadata be even the smallest bit meaningful when - ”

“I have a Word doc for bibliographical purposes, I don’t need any more than that,” he insists, defensive.

Charlie rolls her eyes, unable to believe what she’s hearing.  He has a Word doc!  Three subject level sorting!  The man has crawled out of the dark ages.

“I’m just saying, something like LibraryThing would …”

 “Enough!” Miles growls.  “My ears are about to start bleeding  Charlie, they’re his damn books.  Bass – if Charlie says you’re being an idiot, you probably are.  But lucky for you, help is at hand.”

He marches into the kitchen and plucks a marker and a piece of notepaper from their place on the counter.  “You told me you’d be earning $60 an hour at this new job, right?”

 Charlie wrinkles her nose in confusion.  “Yes?”

“Okay then.”  He pushes the note her way, and scrawled on it in Miles’ surprisingly neat handwriting is an IOU: $3000, in fact. 

“Huh?” Charlie asks eloquently, and Miles pats her hand but ignores her confusion to turn to Bass with a Cheshire Cat grin.

“Charlie’s a professional librarian, Bass,” Miles smirks over his whiskey. “So I figure – what could be the best present I could ever give my best friend?”

Her mouth is open in horror as realisation dawns, but it doesn’t help.  Miles is still talking.

“She’s always telling me how good she is, so time to let her prove it,” Miles smirks. “I’ve just bought you two full weeks of Charlie’s time.  Happy Christmas, Bass.”

Danny hoots with laughter and her Dad salutes Miles with his glass.  “Genius idea, big brother.  Miles and I will help you unpack the truck, Bass, and Charlie will organise all three of us.  She’s the real General in this family,” he smirks. 

“Three thousand dollars?” Charlie marvels, stunned.  She could get her car fixed, and still have enough left over for that new computer she’s been lusting over for months.  Though if she’s smart … a downpayment on her student loan.  Maybe she could keep some of it for new clothes – she can’t wear jeans and t-shirts every day when she has a job.

“Three thousand fucking dollars,” she whimpers, barely aware she’s spoken aloud.

She’ll have to get used to difficult people in her job.  And she had wanted to get a look at his library, hadn’t she?  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, she tells herself, sneaking a look at the gobsmacked Professor.  She couldn’t deny the scenery was kind of magnificent and if she just bit her tongue and kept her eyes on the money – she can do it.  She knows she can.

“When would you like to start, Professor,” she grins, and his astonished eyes swing away from Miles to light on her face and there’s none of his usual guardedness, just sheer blue heat and – oh.

Oh shit.  This is a very bad idea.

“I was planning on starting tomorrow, hangover permitting.  But don’t feel you have to.”

“Three thousand dollars says I’ll be there at 9am,” she grins, and her inner monologue is chanting something else now.  Professional.  Professional.  Professional.

Don’t let him know what those eyes do to you.  Don’t think about anything other than how you are going to convince him to actually listen to your ideas.  And whatever you do, Charlie, don’t think about what might happen tomorrow.   When you’re alone together. In his private library.

Professional, her brain screeches, and Charlie has to look away from the eyes she knows she will dream about tonight.  Her hand is shaking as she fumbles for her wine glass and salutes him with it to seal the deal, before tossing it back so quickly she nearly drowns herself with the potent red.

“Nine it is,” she hears him say, and somewhere, Miles is cackling.

“Best present ever,” her uncle crows, and she has a vision of herself turning up to Monroe’s door completely naked except for a tinsel garland draped around her neck.

What would he do, she wonders for a split second, then berates herself as she shakily pours herself another glass of wine.  Professional.  Professional.  Professional!

“Hangover notwithstanding,” she confirms and prays no one can see the panic in her eyes.


	2. The Republic of Suffering

The barrage of dirty looks as her rattletrap made its way through the otherwise quiet streets has Charlie spoiling for a fight even before she gets out of the car.

Shivering on his doorstep as she deadens her knuckles against his door leaves her close to feral, ready to spit and snarl and tear him to bits. Someone was probably on the verge of calling the cops, she rages as she bangs on his front door. He was expecting her, she was exactly on time, so obviously he was hard of hearing, she decides with a smirk. That happened to old people, right? And clearly he’d had plastic surgery or sold his soul to the Devil or something, because underneath the pretty façade, he was a doddering fusspot. Barely crawled into the 20th century with his fondness for Dewey and his three-level sorting, and his stinking Word doc. They should just order the walking frame now …

The door flies open, and the doorway fills with Monroe. He’s rubbing his eyes, a pair of hornrimmed glasses pushed up on his forehead, blonde curls rioting every which way around his lightly stubbled chin. No walking frame, her mind scrambles, desperate for distraction. Doddering old fusspot, she tells herself again because Oh. My. God.

“You got the heat on,” she blurts, remembering him bitching with Miles about how slow the utilities people had been. But the warmth from inside his house is already licking at her frozen extremities, and Monroe – Monroe is barefoot. Wearing tight, faded jeans. And a white t-shirt so thin she can see the way his pecs bunch as he rubs his hands together to ward off the wintry blast from the open door.

“God, have you been out here long? I was pretty caught up,” he notes absently as he beckons her inside, oblivious to the fog of lust that has suddenly claimed her faculties.

She wants to say “yes, I fucking have,” and “yes, it was frigging cold” but her brain is stuck on “holy shit, he has a six-pack.” And an ass so tight he could crack walnuts, she moans as he leads her into the house, saying something about coffee.

“That’d be great,” she manages. “Black is good.”

“Such a Matheson,” he snorts, and she’s struck again by just how well he seems to know her family. He and Miles had grown up together, she knows that, but just how close had they been? A $3000 Christmas present suggests pretty damn close, she reasons, though knowing Miles it was as much for her benefit as it was for Monroe’s. Not that she’s complaining.

(Tinsel, a naughty inner voice whispers.   You really should have gone with the tinsel.)

Charlie grits her teeth and puts on her best librarian voice. “What were you working on?” It’s not that she’s interested in what he does, she tells herself. She’s just being polite. And her Dad had mentioned Monroe wrote books as well as lectured at a number of different institutions.

He winces a little and shoots her a sidelong glance. “Uh – I was looking up those sites you suggested, actually. I was thinking about what you said at dinner and, uh, figured an online catalogue could be useful for me. And if I’m ever going to do it, now’s the time. Professional help and all,” he shrugs.

She has to blink twice and bite her tongue to banish the smug before she can respond. “More importantly, when you can plan it from the bare shelves up,” she smiles, and yes. Maybe she can do this. He’d listened to her opinion. Took her advice.

Maybe he’d even been thinking about her.

Wait. What?

She didn’t want him thinking about her. Not like that.

Oh, who are you kidding, her lusty inner voice taunts. You’re still picking your tongue up off the floor from when he opened the door looking like _that_.

Charlie almost moans her agreement, but chooses to listen to her obstinacy instead. He’s still an uptight prick.   And old, she adds hurriedly. Really old – they’d gone to school together and she _knew_ Miles was nearly 50, for God’s sake.

Well, the fact remains, that 50-year-old ass makes you want to drop your panties, her libido choruses as he walks down the hall in front of her, the white t-shirt clinging to the muscles of his back and the rise and fall of his buttocks mesmerising under the faded jeans.

“This will be the library,’ he says and throws open a set of double doors.

Fucked. She is _so_ fucked.

(Preferably up against that ladder, her libido smirks. Or on the rug that needs to go in front of the fireplace. Both. He looks like he’d be good for both.)

“Did you just want to check things out today or did you want to get started?” he asks, and her heart threatens to slam its way out of her chest.

“Started is good,” she manages to meep, then flushes as he turns enquiring blue eyes her way. He can’t tell, she assures herself. It’s all in her head. He’s got no way of knowing just how many dirty pictures are going through her head right now.

He runs a hand through his messy curls and she gasps as she yanks her gaze away and forces it to settle on the bare shelves, somehow almost sad in their nakedness.

“The first crates of books arrive tomorrow,” he offers, almost as if he read her mind, and she shoves that possibility right away to focus on all the things they have to do between now and then.

As long as she doesn’t have to look at him, or listen to him, or think about him, she just might get through this.

Maybe.

*

Charlie Matheson’s huge blue eyes are dilated with something that looks a lot like … nope. Not going there, Bass tells himself. She’s a kid. Miles’ niece. Here as a favour to a family friend, nothing more.

But he’s not unaware of the effect he has on some women, and young Charlie is showing all the signs. Ignore it, he orders himself, just like you would any other co-ed trying to throw herself in your path. But this one isn’t a bubble-head trying to giggle him to death, or a vixen trying to sweet talk her way into his bed. She’s brainy, and she’s professional, and if he’s not mistaken, she doesn’t like him very much.

Maybe he’d imagined her gaze hot on his back when he’d lead her up the hall, since she had looked ready to murder him just moments before. He’s sure he misinterpreted a boatload of cues last night, when the hungry look in her eyes contrasted with a demeanour so icy he’d wondered if Miles had shared details of some of their racier exploits. But that’s the second time he’s caught her staring at his ass, and if she licks her lips one more time … he wants to back her into a corner and tease her with all the hostility she’s been throwing in his face since the minute Miles opened the door.

Miles. Fuck.

It doesn’t matter what Miss Sexy Librarian wants to do to him.   Even if she wasn’t half his age, he wouldn’t betray his best friend’s trust like that.   And Miles would have every right to never speak to him again if he took advantage of a sweet girl’s grudging favour for a family friend.

He dares another glance across the room to where she’s measuring up his bookcases and jotting her notes onto a roughed out plan of the room. Her ass is like a peach in low slung denim jeans and every time she reaches up her shirt tail offers him a delicious flash of her lower back just where it starts to curve into her butt.   She’s sweet alright – probably tastes like honey.

Charlie swivels around to raise an eyebrow when his tortured groan breaks the silence in the room; he’s been digging in his laptop for the last audit he did, and praying he included proper bibliographical information. He knows most of the books, but sometimes the titles tended to blur together and he knows for a fact he has three separate treatises rejoicing in the name of The War Between the States.

“Problem?”

“Looks like we will need that scanner thing of yours. My last update was three years ago,” he covers smoothly. “Apparently my systems aren’t as well maintained as I like to think.”

Her smile is wide and generous. “No big. We’ll just map it out on basic proportions; there’s enough space here for us to backfill sections as we unpack. Can you guess a general breakdown from the old list? Or has it changed too much?”

“The new consignment has a bit more of the ancillary material, but most is still in my primary areas of interest.”

A tilt of her head encourages him to elaborate, and the genuine interest in those sky blue eyes tickles at every pleasure centre he has. Fuck. She likes it when he talks about books. How are they going to survive that?

“Military history is about 80 percent of the total. A full span, from ancient to modern warfare. Biggest section within that is the Civil War, and from there I file by author.”

“No third level sorting at all?”

“No. I’m familiar enough with what my peers are writing to find what I need from there.”

The little wrinkle of her nose tells him she finds his certainty objectionable. She clearly doesn’t know just how reliably single-note most historians are. They call him a wild card because he insists on having more than one research focus for God’s sake. “Most of them are morons, Charlotte.”

Her jaw drops and the demon on his shoulder cackles manically at the storm brewing in those glorious eyes. If she doesn’t wipe that ill-disguised sneer off her face, he’s going to spend the rest of the day thinking about all the ways he could manage it, dammit.

“Of course they are,” she mutters, glaring at the empty bookshelves as she yanks at the measuring tape viciously. “Professional,” she grates, under her breath, and he smiles because he’s not the only one struggling.

She wants to deck him, and that’s okay, because he wants to fuck that insolent mouth until all she can say is his name.   His eyes blur out of focus at the thought, and when they come back, he’s staring at the rich amber glow of the freshly polished timber floors. He needs some rugs, he notes, and tries to push away the obvious coda. It’s no use, taking up residence in his hindbrain, feeding him a slew of pornographic images. He gives in to the smirk, and makes a note on his phone. He wouldn’t want Miles’ girl to hurt her knees, would he?

“What’s the other 20 percent?”

“Huh?”

“Of your collection. The 20 percent that isn’t history,” she reminds him, hip cocked with impatience.

Stick with rolling your eyes, he wants to tell her. I don’t need to be thinking about your sublime ass any more than I already am. Instead he answers the question.

“Miscellaneous. Some fiction. Biographies. Poetry.” He smiles, picturing her head down, ass up in his favourite crate. “Erotica.”

“Oh.” She swallows, and he has to hand it to the girl. She’s good. Only the faintest trace of a blush as she turns away to study the shelf space.

“Well, you’ll probably want your primary section near your desk, so you might want to decide where that will go. And since the other sections are more … pleasure reading, perhaps they could go on the shelves either side of the fireplace?”

“Make that into a little bit of a reading nook? I could see it,” he grunts approval, trying not to embroider the scene already building in his minds eye. This library was his retreat, and a workspace. And he’d have no reason to have her here at all, once they were done. So that mental image of her all curled up in his favourite armchair, quietly reading while he finished up some work … it was as unlikely as the one of her on her knees. Or spread out over the desk that was still enroute from Philly, bright hair a brilliant contrast to the century-old wood.

And fuck. Just like that, he’s hard again.

He moves away from her to prowl the boundaries of the room, an airy rectangle that takes up the entire southern end of his new home. He’d been planning to use a second room as his study, but she was exactly right … he’d either end up while piles of books next to his chair like he used to back in Philly, or constantly walking back and forth.

Better to set the desk up in here, at the far end of the room, with his own works on the shelves either side of the picture window overlooking the river. He’d paid enough for the goddamn view that he’d be stupid not to take advantage of it. (Maybe she could curl up there too, more beautiful than the river beyond, silent company as he graded papers and attempted to stay in front of the academic ratrace.)

Bass Monroe blinks, unable to comprehend the direction of his own thoughts. Raw lust for a gorgeous young woman was one thing, but what in all the hells was _that_? It was almost as if he wanted … no. He couldn’t. And even if he had some sort of thing for the girl, it didn’t mean anything more than his own loneliness as he stared down middle age. A child who never spoke to him and the only woman he’d ever loved long in the ground … no wonder he was spinning domestic fairytales around a pretty face.

Laughable, really, because he’d proved himself a disaster on the relationships front, and even if he hadn’t, Charlie Matheson wasn’t the woman for him. They’ll all be better off if he concentrates on his books, ignores his best friend’s luscious niece, and takes the edge off by getting himself laid. As soon as possible, he vows, remembering the lustre of her skin every time she reaches up to take another measurement, and the smirk that dances at the end of that mobile mouth when she’s judging him.

It’s a Catch 22, really. She’s so gorgeous that when she sneaks glances at him, he has to do something drastic to stomp out the flame of temptation. He acts like an asshole, or the nitpicky academic he knows he’s not, and she bites down hard on her lip or glares at him with stormy blue eyes. Unfortunately, it’s so goddamn sexy he just wants to throw down with her right there.

She’d be glorious in full flight, this girl. Tongue like a razor and a temper surprisingly hot for the cool-as-ice Mathesons. Denied the pleasure of defusing the tension the way they both want to, he knows they’ll end up hurling insults at each other at some point. He just hopes he’s strong enough to avoid yanking her to him and kissing her until they’re both trembling with something more honest and authentic. All that passion? This girl wouldn’t know how to hold back, would give herself over completely over to the pleasure so completely that she would abandon her every inhibition.

His perfect complement, he thinks sorrowfully. Twenty years too young, born of the family he thinks of as his own.

It’s out the question, of course. He’s a Monroe, and a gentleman. His honour simply won’t allow it.

Random humming in search of a tune suddenly reaches his ears and he swings around to find her bobbing her head to something on her phone, hips executing the occasional shimmy as she moves along the row of bookcases. He swallows, newly doubtful, and prays he’s managed to piss her off enough in the past 24 hours that he won’t ever be forced to resist Charlie Matheson.

Because God knows he’s not sure he can.

*

Charlie imports the last set of potential categories into the map she’s created, and hits save. So maybe he preferred three level – which was actually two level the way he did it, she sniffed, but LibraryThing had all the categories there, waiting, and all she had to do was drag and drop. She’d rearrange the shelf map as she scanned the books, but this would give her enough to start, she assures herself.

The two long walls will house his primary collection, the shelves either side of the bay window would hold his own works and the key journals, and the specialist collections would take up the far end of the room. The reading nook, she remembers with a smile, and shivers at the intimate little picture the idea conjures up.

Unloading the truck would be hours of hard labour, it occurs to her. Maybe she’d suggest Monroe take Miles and her Dad out for a beer to say thanks, leaving her to unpack the crates by herself. Just Charlie, her trusty scanner, and thousands of books. Some, she thinks with a sly smile, likely to be a lot more interesting than others.

She pulls her earbuds out and is halfway across the room to share her plan with Monroe when the room is suddenly assaulted by the bombastic pap that she has programmed as Jason Neville’s ringtone: _“I’m, too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, too sexy …”_

He was sexy, Charlie sighs, but the problem was, you had to _talk_ to him. She snatches the phone up quickly, her little joke somehow less funny in Monroe’s presence.

“Hey, Jason.”

“Charlie! I was hoping I’d catch you. Remember we talked about making plans for New Years Eve? My roster finally came through and I’ve got libo for the entire week from tomorrow.”

He wouldn’t ask her directly, she knows. That would mean brooking the chance she might say no. And she’d felt so bad after fuck-and-run attempt that she’d limped right back to a guy who completely ignored who she was, then looked hurt when she insisted on keeping things light.

Spending New Year’s Eve with the guy wasn’t the way to convince him she wasn’t up for anything more than the occasional hookup, Charlie’s common sense yelled, but he was sweet sometimes, and she didn’t want …

“That’s nice, Jason. You didn’t seem to think it would happen, so …”

Lie, Charlie. Lie to him – you’re going to have to be cruel to be kind.

“You made plans with someone else?”

“Uh, no. Not exactly. Just talked over a few options.”

“Great! I’ve booked a table at Lalonde, the rooftop terrace, so we’ll have the best vantage point for the fireworks in town.”

At the most romantic restaurant in town, she grimaces, screwing up her face. Surely she’s not going to let him …

A tiny sound of mirth escapes the man at the other end of the room, eyes trained on her face as he blatantly eavesdrops on her side of the conversation. They’d laughed about him over dinner, Miles and Monroe, her uncle regaling his friend with tales of all the soldiers she had turned down for dates, and the one she’d accepted.

“You remember Neville, don’t you Bass? Effective like his old man, but no imagination at all. But the kid has biceps as big as my head, Bass, so I’m guessing Charlie likes something about him,” Miles had joked, sloshing whiskey into his friend’s glass so that they could toast his hilariousness.

“Ha ha,” Charlie had said at the time, but now – the discomfort that’s churning in her belly, the idea that he might laugh at her …

“That sounds amazing, Jason,” she finds herself saying. “What a gorgeous way to bring in the New Year.”

“With a gorgeous woman,” he flirts, and Charlie’s fake smile hurts on her face.

“Thank you,” she says, as sincerely as she can, then makes her excuses about being in the middle of a job.

Worst of all, when she looks up, Monroe is watching her softly.

“Miles might be paying you, Charlie, but as far as I’m concerned, you are doing me a favour. Talk to your friends whenever you want to, and you only need to come in and help me when it suits you. Certainly not on New Years Eve. I hope you have a wonderful evening with your friend.”

There’s a hint of gratitude in his voice she can’t work out, as well as a warmth she hasn’t really heard before. This Monroe – he’s not distant, or uptight, or so arrogant he makes her teeth hurt.

He wants her to go out with Jason. Wants her to enjoy herself.

The problem is, when he smiles at her like that, she wants nothing more than to stay in.


	3. A Design for Mastery

“That’s the last of them,” Miles grunts as he stacks the last crate of books just inside the door.  “Sixty one fucking crates of books.  Such a fucking nerd.”

Professor Monroe grabs her uncle in a head lock and they tussle like boys, the mock fight eventually devolving into a huddle of laughter.  For all his snarky humour, Charlie has never seen her misanthrope uncle like this, and the obvious bond between them makes her wonder how the hell she’s never met Bass Monroe before.  Why he wasn’t around when she was growing up.

Maybe if he’d been Uncle Bass, you wouldn’t be having this problem now, her inner slut observes.

Doubtful, Charlie admits as she takes a long slug of her beer and tries not to ogle the ridiculous display of heaving male flesh.  Monroe can hold his own against her uncle, it appears, and she’s kind of curious about how that works, given their respective vocations.  He’s in ridiculously good shape, sure, but … there’s skill there, if she’s not mistaken.  Where the hell does a historian learn to fight?

She wants to ask, but knows it won’t be welcomed.  Their careful détente won't allow personal conversations.  She keeps getting glimpses of a man she’d like to know better, but it’s becoming obvious exactly why he’d been such an asshole before.  She’s never seen two men so tight, and Charlie suspects every time Monroe looks at her there’s a neon sign flashing over her head.  “Danger: best friend’s niece!” perhaps.  Or maybe it’s more explicit, courtesy of uncle Miles.  “Don’t even think about it, buddy.”

It’s not a problem, she tells herself. She and the Professor – Monroe if she’s feeling particularly slighted – have reached an accord.  He defers to her on matters of organisation, they chat lightly about his work, and they smile wanly at each other’s jokes.  They don’t flirt, or touch, or even let themselves look too long. He calls her Charlotte, no matter how many times Miles explains she’s Charlie to everyone else, and she tries not to think of him as Bass.  

It’s easy when he’s being an uptight asshole, or so anal about something she wants to strangle him.  The undeniable fact that he is a ridiculously good-looking man shouldn’t be enough to make her heart lurch every time he laughs. But when he geeks out telling her about a book in his collection, or looks at her over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses, then bathes the room in that megawatt smile – it’s hard not to like him.  Even harder not to want him.

And tomorrow, after two days with her Dad and Miles underfoot, it’s going to be just the two of them.  Just as well she’s too exhausted to even think about that, Charlie thinks with a shiver.  She’s been helping shift boxes all day, and now, she’s just going to collapse with her beer.  And forget all about the infuriating man slumped against the opposite wall.

“Sixty boxes of fucking books, and not even one couch.  Or a TV!  How the hell you gonna watch the game?” Miles complains, barely able to hide his smirk at the wide, white smile he gets in return. 

“At yours, obviously.” He shrugs then, the grin relaxing to lazy smile. “I’ll buy that shit later – I’ve got my books, my desk and a bed. Everything I need, brother,” Monroe pronounces with grandiose wave of his beer. His certainty has Charlie giggling into her beer when Miles pipes up again.

“Not to mention your nubile handmaiden,” her uncle smirks, nodding in Charlie’s direction before he dissolves into laughter. Her Dad looks uncomfortable for a moment before Miles’ glee satisfies him of the joke, and if Bass nearly chokes on his swallow of beer, Charlie is only one who notices. 

“How fucking unreconstructed of you,” she bitches lazily, exhaustion and her beer buzz making it difficult to summon her outrage.    Miles flips her off, but its Monroe's long, shaky exhale that captures her attention: he’s watching her, gaze hooded, but his thoughts are naked on his face. Charlie gulps at the unadulterated lust boiling in his eyes. 

We’d been doing so well, she panics.  Thanks a fucking _bunch_ , Miles.

But Monroe, it turns out, is a master of deflection. 

“Hardly my handmaiden – more like the boss,” he offers wryly, making her Dad snort with agreement and Miles chuckle into his beer, unaware of the havoc he’d unleashed.

“That’s our Charlie,” her Dad cackles, then starts telling some story about how she’d organised a student revolt in the seventh grade.

Monroe laughs obediently, but his eyes never leave her, heating her blood as they drift down her body, lingering on her small handfuls of breasts, and the nip of her waist above the flare of her hips.  His gaze is burning by the time it climbs back up to her face, the air between them thick with silent conversation.

 _Nubile indeed_ , his eyes tell her, and that strained breath? _So very sexy._

But then his mouth twists, and his shoulders lift in a rueful shrug.  _Not that I plan to do a damn thing about it._

Charlie looks away, crushed by the death of a possibility she hadn’t truly realised had existed.  It was crazy, anyway – he was old enough to be her father.  What could they possibly have in common?  She snorts, and chugs down the last of her beer, then stretches her spine out slowly.

“I’m exhausted,” she confesses, and “gonna head home.  Nine okay for tomorrow?”

“Whenever you get here is fine,” he says with a salute, even though they both know she’ll be on his doorstep at nine exactly.  Professional.  Both of them trying to forget all about that look, because tomorrow, it’s just the two of them, his library, and several thousand books.

Charlie has to force herself to keep her attention on the road in front of her, and fumbles the key in her own front door.  When sleep comes, it’s a fitful thing of strange half-remembered dreams: running and fighting, running and fighting, a swimming pool, and the glow of bare, golden skin under a sulphur yellow light.  Her belly swirling with hate and lust and fury so bad that she needs, needs … she wakes coated in sweat and unfulfilled desire, and slips her hand down into her pyjama pants, trying not to picture his face.

She fails.

Her fantasy whispers sweet nothings into her hair, clean-shaven Professor Monroe one minute, a snarling, bearded stranger the next; not that it matters, it’s the same flashing smile and contemptuous sneer and flame blue eyes pushing her higher and higher … the orgasm is so intense she bucks up off the bed and shouts his name to her rafters.

Bass, she realises later.  Not Monroe, even as her overtaxed brain recast him as some sort of malevolent warrior prince.  Even in her half-asleep state she had recognised Bass behind the mask, and whatever it was that lurked behind those eyes had surged through her, joy and safety as well as the thrill of pure arousal.

*

He wakes at six, his traitorous brain already whispering her name.  Bass groans as he remembers the previous day, then the day to come.  He forces himself out of bed and fishes a t-shirt, running shorts and shoes from the mostly empty closet.  Maybe a run will flush the memory of the incident out of his system.

Nubile, nubile, nubile, his memory taunts him in sync with his footfalls. Fuck Miles anyway.  It’s probably just another word to him, a throwaway comment with no real thought to the full, rich kaleidoscope of meaning.  He wouldn’t have turned his back on Bass if he did.  Wouldn’t have turned his back on them, because he’d seen it rocket through her too, that word.  Seen how she breathed it in, embroidered it, made it dance.

He hadn’t been able to look away, and it had hung between them, that moment, as she flushed under his gaze and nibbled at her lips as he just stared and stared and stared.

Nubile, he groans, as he jerks off in the shower.  A young woman, flowering into her sexual maturity. Lush.  Fuckable.  Ready for a man. All the things he’d been trying not to think about when it came to Ben’s little girl.

Bass grips his cock tighter as the reality of her invades his senses.  She’s no one’s little girl, and probably hasn’t been for years.  He doesn’t know exactly how old she is, but he’s pretty damn sure it’s closer to 25 than 20 … her awareness of him, the naked lust behind her eyes, the way their conversation skips away from anything that might get them in trouble … she’s well aware of the risk here.  How inadvisable it is.  How close they are to the edge.

“Jesus.  Fuck.  Ch …,” Bass embeds his teeth in his lip to stop her name tumbling free, relief washing over him with every spurt from his cock.  It’ll be easier now.  He’s been fighting it for days, wound as tightly as a clock, and the last thing he wants to be today is sexually frustrated.  As it is, he might have to leave her to it if his control starts to slip.  She’s more than capable, and he did have furniture to buy …

It’s self-preservation, not cowardice, he decides.  A good general acknowledges his weaknesses. And he’s trying to do the right thing here.  Even if that means withdrawing from the field.  He’d give her an hour, maybe, then make himself scarce.

His plan leaves him whistling as he makes coffee, then contemplates breakfast.  Will she have eaten? Maybe he could …

Not without knowing which of the fucking boxes held his motley collection of pots and pans, Bass concedes.  The girl might not like pancakes anyway.  Maybe she was one of those kids who didn’t eat. 

The doorbell interrupts him, and he glances at the clock, surprised.  It’s barely eight.  Surely they’d said nine?

“Hope it’s not too early,” she shrugs when he opens up.  “Couldn’t sleep.  Danish?”

He forces himself to look away from the shining beauty of her face and inspect the box of pastries instead.  “Those smell amazing.  I was just wondering what to have for breakfast and here you are. Come in.”

“Sounds like you’re planning to eat me up,” she smirks, and they both freeze.

There’s that fucking cliff again, Bass thinks, then shakes his head. He’s too fucking old to act like  a scared teenager.  They can do this – hell, maybe they can even have some fun with it. 

“Come in anyway?”

Her smile is wide and delighted, and he doesn’t miss the swing in her step as she moves into the house. “Thank you, Professor.”

“Call me Bass,” he invites for the umpteenth time, and wonders at the strange expression that flickers over her face.

“Think you can manage Charlie?” she says archly, and they both grin at the double entendre, only to burst into laughter at each other’s amusement.

It’s easy, after that, Charlie so keen to get started that she only eats half of her pastry.  “It’ll keep,” she insists, her enthusiasm infectious as she ushers Bass into the library.  “How are we going to do this?”

“Special collections first?” he suggests, and her smile is as wide and sly as the moon. 

“Why the hell not?  Then we can see how much space you have left for the main collection,” she teases, neatly sidestepping the likelihood that the box they are about to open is full of erotica.

Or so he thinks, until she hands him the crowbar and leans in close to whisper in his ear.

“I can leave the room if you need to be alone.”

“I think I can control myself,” he says gravely, and winces because he sounds so fucking pompous.  It’s for the best, he tells himself, trying not to look at Charlie.  She’s his best friend’s niece, and half his age.

He damn well better control himself. 

*

Charlie isn’t even a few inches into the crate before she realises they have a problem.  She’s expecting books, but instead finds a hundreds of small scrolls nestling on top of one another. Scrolls don’t sit neatly on a bookcase, and when she picks one at random to inspect it, is shocked to discover the provenance stamp indicates authorship more than 300 years ago.

Her professional training wants to scream at the casual treatment of such a vulnerable document, but she tells herself to calm the fuck down. It's erotica. It probably doesn't have significant historical value, just ... aesthetic appeal. She unrolls it to double check the condition, only to find herself mesmerised by the delicate painting she discovers. Her heart starts to drum a tattoo as she lets herself look, at the colours, the brushstrokes ... the Japanese man with his robes thrown back to reveal a huge, rampant cock, and the almond-eyed woman looking over her shoulder as if urging him to plunge into her. She puts the scroll on the shelf with shaky hands, and then closes her eyes to settle her breathing.

Monroe clears his throat behind her, dousing her in cold water. Professional, she thinks. Professional!

"Did Miles mention I start work at The Monroe Library on the 20th? Talk about a co-incidence. This is the sort of thing I'll be dealing with there - vulnerable documents, they call them. But I'm guessing you don't have a temperature controlled room all ready?"

 He looks shamefaced as she peers into the box and tries to calculate just how many she’ll be dealing with.

“Uh – I forgot.  In Philly I had a custom-built section.  Kind of like a wine rack.  The people who bought my house were going to use it _as_ a wine rack,” he says, nostrils flaring with disapproval.

Charlie rolls her eyes in mock horror and considers the problem.  “What are they anyway?”

Monroe bites the inside of his cheek and examines the floor before raising his eyes to meet hers.  “Shunga, mostly.  Japanese erotic art.  And I’ve had my dealer scavenging for surviving pages from a few ancient versions of the Kama Sutra.”

“Oh.”

The urge to unroll another one of the scrolls itches at her fingers so hard that Charlie has to busy herself with scooping them out of the crate and stacking them in the corner of one of the bookcases.  “They look quite delicate – are you sure this is the right place to store them?”

“Some of Indian pages are five or six hundred years old, so I should probably look at getting them in something temperature controlled, but the shunga are mostly fairly robust.  Nothing too valuable either– most of the ones that qualify as art I’ve had framed,” he offers with a shrug.  “Curiosities, really.”

Charlie looks around the room, all four walls covered in floor-to-ceiling bookcases broken only by the fireplace at one end and the bay window at the other.  “Hope you weren’t planning on hanging anything much in here.”

He smirks his agreement and nods to the space over the fireplace.  “Haven’t figured out what will go there yet.  It’ll have to be a good one since I’ll be looking at it a lot.  The Hokusai, maybe.”

“The Wave?  You own an original print of The Wave?”

“Not the one I was thinking of,” he smirks, but turns back to the unruly stack of scrolls without any further explanation.  “I’ll have to call a carpenter to build something in, but in the meantime – where can I buy a cheap wine rack or ten?”

“Ikea?  Specially if you need other stuff, it’s probably worth the trip up to Schaumburg.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Uh – everything. Seriously? You haven’t ever been to Ikea?”

“We have furniture stores in Philadelphia, Charlotte.  Ones I didn’t need to practically leave town for,” he scowls, stomping over to the next crate of books.  “Leave the scrolls until we’ve got somewhere to put them - it’s past time we started on the books.”

She stares at him open-mouthed, then grabs her scanner.  “Okay then.”

“What on earth is that for?”

“Scanning the barcodes.  Automatic data population.  It means we don’t have to enter as much data into the computer.”

“I see.”

You damned well should, I spent enough time explaining, she thinks bemusedly, and channels her confusion into pulling books from the crate and scanning everything she can find with a barcode.  She ignores the salacious pictures and the tempting covers to keep her hands moving faster than her eyes can keep up.

Monroe finds his sense of humour mid-afternoon, but it’s too late by then.  Charlie is pissed.  He blows hot one minute and cold the next, and yes, she knows why, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

“You can stop anytime, you know.”

“What?”

“With the asshole act.  It’s getting a bit obvious.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Charlotte.”

She cocks a sceptical brow and strides close to poke him in the centre of the chest.

“There it is.  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Charlotte.’  I’m not an idiot, Monroe.  I get it.  You like me, but you think you shouldn’t, so you bitch and moan to make me dislike you.  But it’s so  transparent, and I have my fucking pride, okay? Your virtue is safe or whatever.”

He stares back, shamefaced.  Then the tension seems to leave him, and his laugh sounds – tired.  Exhausted, Charlie thinks, concerned.

“I like you?  Come on, Charlotte.  As if that’s the problem.  I’m allowed to like you.   Even allowed to enjoy you, to a point, old family friend and all that.”

He moves closer, and gently pries the shunga she’d been inspecting from her hand.

“Maybe I’m even allowed to do this.” He wraps his hand around her long braid and tugs, making her gasp with the frisson of delight.  “Or this.”

His lips feather across her forehead, tiny, chaste kisses that make her ache.  Then he steps away.

“But that’s all, kid.  That’s where this stops.  Please.”

It’s the plea in his voice that breaks her.  The pain.  She doesn’t want to make him feel like that.  She doesn’t want to make anyone feel like that.

Even if she can still feel the warmth of his lips on her forehead.  Even if her panties are soaked through, her limbs shaking, her entire body singing.

“Okay,” she scratches out, but even as it leaves her lips, she knows it for a lie.  Right now, she’d sell her fucking soul for a real kiss.

But is she really prepared to squander his?


	4. At the Gates of History

“Who the hell packed these anyway?” Charlie growls, bemused by the stacks of books on the floor around her. “I have Civil War, more Civil War, more Civil war and then … carpentry. And this seems to be a collection of recipes,” she marvels, flicking through the yellowing pages.

“I had my research assistant back in Philly start the job, but apparently her sister went into labour or something, so the removalists finished it off,” Bass says sheepishly. “But – recipes? Really?”

His brow wrinkles adorably and Charlie’s breath catches as he crouches behind her to peer over her shoulder. Then his big, warm hand covers her own to flip to the fronticespiece. “The Field Kitchen,” he mumbles, as if to himself. “Jesus, could it be …”

Charlie smothers a giggle as Bass practically vibrates with excitement as he grabs her scanner. “Can I?”

“Sure,” she grins back, reminding herself to tease him about this later, when he’s not being so ridiculously cute. He’d harrumphed and frowned like a fusty old man the first time she’d pulled out her scanner, and even when she’d shown him all the information they’d generated for his brand new account on LibraryThing, he’d pretended to be unimpressed. Four days and almost twenty crates of books later, he was starting to change his mind.

The recipe book, however, lacked anything as modern as a barcode. It might not even have an ISBN, Charlie suspected, given the unusual paperstock and the uneven quality of the printing.

“Dammit. Nothing,” he scowls, and turns the book in his hands to search for a serial number to input manually. “Ideas?”

His laser blue eyes flick up to hers demanding input, so intense that she feels the stare all the way down to her toes. “I—it looks like a small publishing house. Or custom.   We’ll just have to see what we can find manually.”

Charlie pushes herself upright and lets go a long, shuddery breath as she crosses to his desk to raise a query page on her laptop. His Macbook hadn’t even made it into the study yet, Monroe grumbling every time she made him create an entry himself, and his big desk largely a staging post for stacks of books.

“I can clear it off,” she’d offered, but he’d waved her away, muttering something about it being safer that way.

She’d closed her eyes, not caring if he saw it. Denying the attraction was beyond them both now. They rely on her pride and his honour, tossed like driftwood on a sea of glances that cling and touches that linger. Soon, she knows, they’ll be pulled under.

She tries not to think about how sweet that death will be, but everywhere she looks holds another fantasy. The leather desk chair creaks as she settles into it, and in her minds eye, she’s hooking her legs over the arms to spread herself wider for his questing tongue. Her fingers shake with the need to be tangled in his curls, resenting the need to touch anything so prosaic as a keyboard.

“What were you thinking it might be anyway?” she asks, and nearly misses his reply with all the other questions haunting her. (Hard and fast? Face down? Or wrapped in each other’s arms, overcome?)

“Last time I met Drew Faust, she told me about a woman who set up Lee’s field kitchen. Because Sarah Latour was southern gentlewoman, she wasn’t allowed to travel with the army, but she taught the army cooks how to make the General’s favourite dishes, even if they had to do it with squirrel. Drew found a letter that talks about a book of recipes from her kitchen, and if I know my Aunt Phil, that would have been something she wanted to get her hands on,” he says, turning the book over in his hands. “The name isn’t familiar, but in those days, she might not have wanted to use her real name. It could be something else altogether, but why would it be in this collection, then?”

She types in ‘field kitchen’ and comes back with nothing that resembles the book, then tries “Civil War recipes,” to the tune of 40,000 results.

“Unless we want to spend all week, maybe give her a call and ask maybe? She might know the woman’s pen name? It might be in here somewhere, but there’s nothing specific coming back on that title.”

“Yeah. I’ll do that. Have we shelved Mothers of Invention yet? I just want to check the index to make sure she didn’t have anything on her in that.”

“F for Faust? Towards the bottom of that shelf over there,” Charlie nods, then can’t help but watch him as he crouches to peruse the spines. He snatches the book from its fellows and is already scanning the index by the time he drops into the huge leather chair behind his desk. She’s lost him, Charlie knows. Professor Monroe locks his attention onto something and tunes out the world, refusing to admit any distractions until he has every last answer he’s looking for. She’s seen it half a dozen times now; every time she can’t help wonder what it would be like to have his total focus.

Charlie lets the thought ripple through her, then curses herself when something makes him drag his eyes back up to her.   Please God let it have been an idle thought, or something he wants her to do, not some tangible sign of her arousal, she prays, hope sinking as they dwell on her flushed face, then slide down her body.

His voice is scratchy when he finally speaks. “What about her other books – I know I’ve got at least five of them. But there’s just two here, and then Flood.”

“I think I saw a few more in that pile I was scanning,” she croaks. It’s a relief to be able to walk away from him, the air so thick her chest labours to drag it into her lungs. “Here’s The Republic of Suffering and At the Gates of History. What was the other one called?”

There’s a long beat of silence, then two. When he finally answers, the morning’s easy rapport surrenders to something infinitely more heated - Charlie doesn’t even have to look at him to know he’s staring at her, mouth twisted in that wicked half smile. “A Design for Mastery.”

And she shouldn’t tease him, shouldn’t swim towards him and tangle her legs with his in bid to pull him down. But the six days they’ve spent together feels like a lifetime, and she knows exactly what he’s thinking, and so help her God, she needs to see those blue eyes set alight.

“I did see something like that … but I shelved it with the erotica,” she offers, and crosses to the shelf to pull a thin volume out from between several others. “This the one?”

She knows damn well it’s not, having spent a revelatory hour with the book during his quest for groceries the previous day. But she had been burning with questions from the moment she opened the glossy black cover and maybe this was one way of getting her answers.

He stills, watchful as a jungle cat, then raises a single eyebrow. “What do you think?”

Charlie inspects the cover, running a questing finger over the deeply embossed title. “Hmm. It’s just called Mastery. Maybe these aren’t the droids we’re looking for.”

Bass snorts at the Star Wars reference, but his eyes are still hungry as they flick from the book in her hands to her face. “So - not the Civil War?”

“Not unless they had tactics I didn’t know about.” Charlie’s heartbeat deafens her as she moves back to his desk, standing at his shoulder as she lets the book fall open between them.

_Fuck._

It had to be this one, didn’t it? A sultry brunette stares straight at the lens, as if daring Charlie to look away. Her dark skin glows underneath a web of golden chains, the waterfall of gilt tumbling from a wide band around her neck to spill over the sinuous curves of her body. Adornment, but functional too. Thrillingly so.

“Do you like her jewellery?”

Charlie shrugs, still not sure. This had been the image that had sent her over the edge yesterday, her fingers creeping into her panties despite her vow to never, ever give in to her urges while still at Monroe’s. At _work,_ she reminds herself, no matter that she knew where he hid his spare key and had an open invitation to help herself to his whiskey. Was that part of the problem? Had she spent so much energy fighting her urge to crawl into his lap that every other boundary had come crashing down? Whatever the reason, something about the picture, about the scenario it evoked, had stolen her will to resist. Is stealing. She's in so much trouble.

“It’s certainly pretty. Uncomfortable, perhaps?”

Because one set of gold chains ends in little jewelled clamps that pinch the woman’s berry-sized nipples to agonising prominence. It’s the second chain that gets her, though. The one that stretches from clamp to clamp, and might hang in a graceful arc if it wasn’t pulled taut, the delicate gold links wrapped around a huge, masculine fist.

“Undoubtedly. But that’s beside the point,” he muses, one blunt finger tracing the slope of a bronze-skinned breast. “Or perhaps, exactly the point.”

Charlie can’t help the noise that escapes from her throat, her entire being focused on the play of his hand over the paper, releasing in a honeyed flood when his fingertip hovers over one swollen, abused nipple. Until yesterday, she’d never spared the darker side of sex any thought. Never wanted anything but a simple, straightforward fuck, but now … she wonders how it might feel. To put herself into someone else’s hands like that.

To be used like that, she reminds herself sternly, but something about the challenge in the dark woman’s eyes refuses to let the assumption sit comfortably. Makes her study the frantic arch of that long, elegant back and the eternal gasp on her lips and wonder – could she be finding her own pleasure in those indignities?

“So, the book’s called Mastery, right? Who’s the master?” Her voice is husky, embarrassingly so, but she needs to know, dammit.

He lifts his eyes from the page and twists in the chair to look up at her. They are already several long strides beyond the boundaries they’d set for themselves, they both know that, but something tells her this is important. Something that matters to him.

(And no, she can’t think about that now. Not with her knees threatening to give out. Not without admitting how much she _wants_ to collapse at his feet.)

“Call it academic enquiry,” she offers weakly.

His mouth twists in wry acknowledgement of her effort. “Well, if that’s what we’re going to call it … it’s the eternal question when it comes to D&S. The central theme – who is the master, and who is the slave? And if you choose be the slave, doesn’t that make you the master?”

He looks away to flip the page, the same woman sprawled on her back on a wide, white bed. This time, the chain is caught between her teeth, pulled even tighter as she tips her head back and arches off the bed in the throes of ecstasy. The man is busy between her thighs, legs thrown over his shoulders and her spike heels digging into his back as his teeth close around her clit.

Charlie sags against Bass’ shoulder as the image batters her consciousness, and his arm creeps around her waist as if he knows she needs the support. She could just swing her leg over, Charlie thinks. Slide herself right over his cock. His very hard cock, she confirms with a glance. He might talk a big game, but she doubts he’d push her away. More likely to pull her in, kiss her just the way she’s been aching for, and they’d end up fucking right there on his desk.

She’s already turning into him when he stops her in her tracks.

“What it boils down to is trust. They’ve worked it all out beforehand. She trusts him to go only as far as she wants. He trusts her to know her limits,” Bass explains, oblivious to the betrayal she’d been about to perpetrate. “Mastery of the self, to trust someone else that much. Mastery of your fears. It can be extraordinarily intimate,” he says softly.

Charlie closes her eyes in shock. Trust. He has already answered her question, but does he trust her enough to admit it?

“So, not just an aesthetic appreciation then?”

“Are you asking if I like to play this way?

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

He hesitates, and the hand at her waist slides over the fabric of her t-shirt in something that could be a caress, but might just be his discomfort with the situation.

“Charlie, I-- ”

“Don’t worry about it, Bass. It’s none of my business,” she stammers, looking about for a reason to escape her humiliation.

“Don’t do that. Look at me.”

She takes a deep breath and straightens up, grateful for the sanity it affords her when his hand drops from her waist. His gaze is waiting for her, insistent and infuriatingly kind.

“In the past, I’ve had partners who enjoyed being submissive, and others who liked to top. I’ve experimented with pain, and yes, there’s probably the odd pair of handcuffs in one of those boxes. But …” he licks his lips, and looks uncomfortable for the first time.

“But?”

“I wouldn’t have the patience. If it were you. I doubt we’d even make the bed.”

Charlie drags in a steadying breath as she fights the elation rising in her body. She wants to go with her first instinct, and crawl into his lap. Wants to tell him he wouldn’t make it of the library.

But she remembers the yearning in his voice as he lectured her on trust and intimacy, and the feeling that had overtaken her then. She’d been aroused by the pictures they’d shared, and intrigued by the idea of power play, but most of all, she wanted that. The intimacy. Knew bone deep that she deserved it, and someone prepared to offer her those things.

And if Bass Monroe was too hung up on who she was to give her that, then it couldn’t be him.

*

Ikea, it turns out, is the seventh circle of hell. Strangely alluring, and near impossible to leave. Every time he turns a corner, Bass finds something else to make fun of, and looks about for Charlie. But she’d refused to come.

He needed furniture, and she needed space, she’d told him. Crazy for it to pierce his heart like a crossbow bolt – after yesterday’s madness, he should be relieved she’s finally seen sense. He’d been ready to flush everything he’s worked for down the toilet just to touch a girl young enough to be his daughter. He might even have done it just for the opportunity to see that look on her face once more, raw sensuality at war with her need for control. Everything he’d said had been true, but he can’t stop thinking about what a magnificent sub she’d be.

Everywhere he turns there is something to torture him with visions of her. He’d steered clear of the bedroom displays – even he’s not that much of a masochist – but hadn’t expected to choose a kitchen table based on the way her hair would look spilling over the dark wood. Didn’t realise why he’d drifted into the curtaining section until he was turning a tasselled cord over and over in his hands wondering it if was soft enough to be trusted against her skin.

And if she doesn’t figure out that the formal couches in the library are just the right height for him to bend her over, then surely the doublewidth divan on the modular setting will make the point he wants someone to curl up in front of the TV with him.

Her, Bass concedes as he stares blankly at the kitchenware. He wants her to curl up in front of the TV with him, and he can no longer ignore the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with sexual fixation they’d developed on each other. He’d been fighting it since the beginning, the draw he’d felt, so much more than mere lust. But even with the new distance between them, she’s still the brightest part of his day, and he keeps looking at his watch to see how soon he can head home.

“Just give me the morning,” she’d asked, and he respected that, he did, but … how long had it been since a few hours had felt weeks long?

(And soon, something keeps drumming in his head. It’s New Year’s Eve tonight, and soon she’ll be gone.)

He could pretend it’s the organisation of his library that he’s worried about, but even he can tell they are nearly done. Miles had paid for two weeks of her time, but she deserved a day or two off before she started her real job on the eleventh. He can manage those last three crates on his own – her system is practically idiot proof, after all. If he’s honest, it would probably faster without her, what with all the time he wastes talking about his work or laughing at her wild stories.

Or just gazing at her, he thinks with a sigh. And if he doesn’t stay out of her way, he’s going to do a lot more than gaze.

Everything in him rebels at the idea of having to avoid her, and he discards it without a second thought. There’s another avenue. The thing he should have done from the start.

He needs to talk to Miles.

*

Charlie hates herself for missing him even before he’s left the house. He’d popped his head into the library to say goodbye, and she’d nearly reconsidered. She loved Ikea.   They would have had a blast together. Maybe even blast through the sexual fog they’d been lost in since yesterday.

She can’t close her eyes without seeing his fingers stroking that image. And every time, it magically transforms into him stroking her, his fingers twisting in that chain. Her body trapped in that delicate golden net, at his mercy.

She’d met her friend Nora for lunch, and fantasised about Monroe the whole way through, more than once jerking back to reality to find Nora’s shrewd brown eyes laughing at her.

“You gonna tell me who he is?” she’d teased, and Charlie had blushed and deflected the question with chatter about her plans for New Year’s Eve.

“Jason’s taking me to Lalique,” she’d confided. “We’ll watch the fireworks from there.”

“So it’ll be just the two of you, all night? You’re going to get proposed to, my friend,” Nora had warned. “Seriously, Charlie. You know that, right?”

“No way, Nora. We’re not even that serious – he’s just trying to impress.”

“Yeah – because he’s serious. Does he know you’re seeing someone else?”

“I’m not! I wouldn’t do that – there’s no-- ”

Nora’s raised eyebrow brought her up short. “I’m not dating anyone else, really.”

“But there is someone.”

Charlie exploded to her feet, slapping a twenty on the table to cover her lunch. “Yeah, Nora. It’s like you and Miles. Never gonna happen, you know?”

She feels awful now, desultorily filling shelves from her ever decreasing pile of scanned books. Her texts – ranging from a simple ‘I’m sorry’ to a screen full of sad emoticons – had gone unanswered. She should have known better than to taunt her friend about her angst-filled on-again/off-again thing with her idiot uncle, who was terrified of the age gap but not so terrified he’d turn Nora away from his door.

She couldn’t survive that, she knows. If she slept with Bass, even once, she’d want all of him. So better not to make that mistake, and focus on the men who actually wanted her.

Nora couldn’t be right about Jason, though. They were just good fun, and he knew it, surely. Maybe she’d suggest they leave the restaurant after dinner and go find her friends for the fireworks. Or maybe she’d rent a room near there and try distracting him some other way. Maybe some of the new tricks she’d been reading about could help them set off fireworks of their own.

It’s late in the afternoon when the rumble of the garage door opening below the house alerts her to Bass’ return. His progress up the stairs is slow, a weird drag-and-bump noise preceding him.

Oversized Ikea bags, she thinks with a grin. Her patience evaporates and she runs to meet him.

“How’d you go?”

“Think I managed to leave a few things there. Maybe a cushion or two. And the kid’s stuff. Didn’t buy any of that.”

“Did you forget furniture?”

“Nah. It’s scheduled for delivery on the second.”

“And here was me thinking I could cancel my date tonight and help you tackle assembly instructions instead.”

The wattage of his smile dims a little before he punches it back up to bright.

“Actually, I have plans of my own. A work thing. A masquerade ball, would you believe. I wouldn’t normally bother, but since I’m new in the job, I felt obliged,” he confesses.

Charlie shivers at the mental picture of Monroe in a simple, black mask, then realises that she won’t be the one who gets to enjoy it. Jealousy rips the words from her mouth before she has a chance to think.

“Do you have a date?”

There’s an odd note in his voice when he answers.

“Why?”

“Uh – I just – those sorts of things you generally have a partner. And you are new in town and I--”

“You’ll be out with your boyfriend, drinking copious amounts of champagne and counting down to midnight just so you can make out in public and then wondering why your drunk boyfriend can’t fuck you properly to welcome the New Year in.”

She closes her eyes at the sudden anger in his voice, and tries not to think about where it might come from. Then flays herself with the hurt like a goad.

“So what’s the grown up thing to do, then? Will you waltz the night away, kiss her on the cheek at midnight and then go back to hers for coffee and coitus? Jesus, I just--”

She stumbles to a halt, unsure of what her intention had been. It was New Year’s Eve. Of course he had plans, and it was none of her business who he was with. Or what they chose to do, she forced herself to admit through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry. None of my business. I need to get going. Enjoy your night,” she rattles, collecting her bag and pushing herself to her feet.

He moves quicker than she does and blocks the doorway for a moment before he realises what he’s doing and jumps out of her way.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just--,” his jaw clenches down on the explanation, and harsh cord of muscle up the side of his neck betrays his agitation. “Don’t leave like this, okay?”

His hand is warm on her arm, and she should be gone, should be getting ready, but his eyes are pleading with her to hear him out. She’ll listen, but she won’t look at him, she compromises.

“Look, I’m sorry. I was completely out of line. I just – I know who’ll have the better time tonight. My date is a colleague, we’ve been collaborating on a new cross-disciplinary course and I thought it would look good. That’s all.”

“Will you touch her?” Charlie growls, and the ferocity in her voice shocks them both.

He lifts her chin to make her look up into his face. His fingers linger, as if unable to leave her skin, stroking a gentle path up her cheekbone and ghosting over the ridge of one eyebrow before spearing into her hair.

“Maybe. I should. I need to get laid, Charlie. So should you.”

She moans, knowing it’s true. “How is that fair to them?”

“Isn’t he good enough to keep you in the moment? To stop you …”

“Thinking of you? Pretending it’s you? No one’s that good, Bass. This isn’t just …”

“Just what?”

She shouldn’t finish the sentence. She can’t. It wouldn’t be fair. Instead, she lies.

“About us. It’s Jason. He’s kinda boring. That’s my problem, I guess. Just bored.”

His lips twitch into a grimace that could pass as a smile, if you hadn’t seen the real thing. There’s a sadness in his eyes that makes her wonder if he actually believed her, and no sign of the aggravation, or hurt pride, she’d been hoping to provoke. Instead he pats her on the shoulder, oh so paternally, and bids her a good night.

“It sounds like he’s really making an effort,” he offers in parting, and she smiles ruefully, self-knowledge flaying her mercilessly.

She hates it when they make an effort. Hates it when they chase her. No wonder she’s such a fool for Bass Monroe.

The one man she can’t have, who refuses to see her, and is the running the other way. Of course he’s the one.

So get over it, moron, she curses herself as she unlocks her car and simply sits, staring blindly through the windshield. You’ve figured out what this is, so now you can move on.

Her cold fingers fumble with the ignition, finally managing to jab the key in. She just needs to get out of here, to see her friends, enjoy her New Year’s Eve. Let the boy woo her, and rediscover what it’s like to scratch her nails down someone’s back, and not to have to think about them in the morning.

She can do this.

*

“God, you’re beautiful in that dress.”

Charlie raises a teasing brow and Jason falls all over himself to assure her that she’s beautiful all the time, the most gorgeous girl on the planet.

“But that dress – you look like a fairy queen. Or a jewel,” he raves, and Charlie’s ego can’t help but purr in response. He really is a sweet guy, and he looks pretty damn hot in his tux. She’d actually wanted to drag him off to the coat closet for a bit when he’d taken his jacket off the first time and she’d seen the biceps straining the material of his dress shirt. And the way he’s been looking at her all night, like he’d do anything just to touch her … she’s pretty sure she could make him climb under the tablecloth and eat her out, right there in the crowded restaurant. All she’d have to do was ask.

If she hadn’t been wearing strappy heels that tied around calves, she could just kick one off and ask him to retrieve it. Then she’d just tug her dress up a little, so he could see …

Her body stirs at the mental image, but it’s wrong. Off. Charlie smiles at Jason’s joke and gazes into her glass of wine trying to … she would widen her thighs, inviting him in, and shudder at the brush of his stubble. She’d have to be good, be quiet, but the first touch of his tongue would have her biting down on her lip and tangling her fingers in that riot of curls just to hold him there. He’d make her come so fast her head would spin, and she’d forget where they were and scream his name – “Bass. Bass. Bass!”

“Uh, what?”

Charlie looks up from her glass to focus on her date’s shocked face. “Sorry, Jason. What were you saying? I was, uh – worrrying about Uncle Miles. He went fishing. With his friend Bass. Kinda funny.”

“Major Monroe? My Dad said they hated each other. Something about his kid? Must of gotten over it, I guess. Bros before hos, right?”

Charlie’s not sure which lovely pronouncement knocks the breath out of her. The fact that Bass has a child. That Miles, somehow, had hated him for it. That Jason could be so stupid as to say something so offensive to his date.

Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t even have to look at the ornate clock on the far wall of the restaurant to know it’s twenty past nine. She’d stopped watching it half an hour ago, convinced that it was only making the time pass slower. The fireworks were due to start at ten, and she’d been desperate for the distraction.

Now she can’t last a minute longer. She can’t even fantasise about a guy between her legs without it turning into Bass, and ache isn’t just physical. She needs to hear the silken rasp of his voice, and force herself not to laugh at his cutting wit and even just to bask in that brilliant smile, even if he doesn’t touch her. Even he never will.

She can’t have him tonight, she knows that, but there’s no way this boy can fill the gap. Her entire body is shrieking just at the thought of letting him try.

Charlie pushes up from the table, clapping a hand over her mouth and making a dash for the washroom. She stands in front of the mirror, hating herself, but unable to contemplate any other course of action. It’s still early enough to get a cab, her deceitful streak plots. You know you want to.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologises as Jason hands her into the back of the cab. It’s convincing, she knows, because she really, really is.

“River North, please. Fitzgerald Street.”

He won’t be home. She knows this. But if she can’t have him tonight, she’ll wrap herself in the job they’re doing together, his books and his desk and the ghost of his presence. She’ll toast the New Year with his whiskey, and then leave. Just in case he brings his date home.

Jealousy stabs her deep and she contemplates leaving him a present so he knows she’d been there, but then reconsiders. She wants him to be happy, dammit. Wants to take away that tortured look he gets when he watches her. Maybe another woman can do that if she can’t.

Maybe this can be the end for her. Put her little obsession away with the year. Hasta la vista, unwise passion and unrequited ... her breath catches, unprepared for the admission.

Love. Dammit. Unrequited love, Charlie, she thinks hopelessly as she pays the cab driver, and steps out onto the sidewalk.


	5. The Friendship that won the Civil War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, the next chapter REALLY WILL be the last. Trust me :D

She’s very attractive, Bass tells himself. Objectively, Tara Winstead – Dr Winstead – is quite lovely, her catlike green eyes bright under the smooth cap of red hair. An expert in her field, an adept conversationalist, quick to smile and laugh. The fact that he actually likes her makes it hard, because the sad truth is – he doesn’t want to be here. Doesn’t want to be with her. Resents her for not being Charlie, and doesn’t that make him an asshole. Not to mention an idiot, because if Charlie were here …

Neither of them would have had the patience for this crowd. They would have danced, and made idle chitchat, and taken advantage of the open bar. Then hightailed it somewhere quiet, somewhere private, where he could show her just how beautiful she was. Sequins and luxurious fabrics glimmer from every corner of the room, but somehow he knows she’d be the most beautiful woman in the place, even if she hadn’t bothered to change out of her slouchy jeans and t-shirt before heading out for the night.

Bass reaches for another glass of champagne to stop his greedy mind from trying to build a picture of what she might be wearing. That was lies madness. Better to tiptoe that ledge between sober enough for a work function, and just drunk enough to appreciate what’s in front of him.  Dr Winstead, of course, and a roomful of other distinguished academics, several of them beautiful women with the sophistication and polish he's supposed to want.  Every one of them important to his work, and yet his feet itch to leave.  

His phone vibrates in the inside pocket of his jacket and he sends up a prayer to whoever it is plans these things as he plucks it out to answer.

“My son probably thinks this is an appropriate time to call,” he apologises with a grimace that can’t be convincing. “Excuse me.”

“Brother,” he greets Miles as soon as he’s out of earshot.

“Got your text. What the fuck is it, Bass? I’m busy.”

“Where are you?”

“In fucking bed.”

“At 9pm on New Year’s Eve?”

“Let’s just say we already rang the New Year in. Twice.”

“Oh. Well that’s awkward, because I’m coming over.”

“The hell you are.”

“Believe it. I’ll try and make it quick. You might even get a kiss at midnight.”

“Like I’m the one you want to be kissing. Spit it out, Bass. Nothing short of World War III is getting me out of this bed anytime soon.”

Bass wonders who the hell has managed to fuck Miles into a coma, then shrugs. He’ll find out in good time. He hadn’t wanted to say it over the phone, but he can’t wait another goddamn day.

Another minute, even.

“Charlie.”

“Huh? What about her? She’s okay, right?”

“Would I be only mentioning it now if she wasn’t? She’s fine. Least I think she is.”

“She isn’t with you?”

What the hell? “Why would she be? She’s out with her boyfriend. Like she should be. I’m at a work party, with a bunch of middle-aged academics just like me. My date’s real pretty, but -- what the fuck were you thinking, Miles, making Charlie come work for me?”

“You’d thank me. She’d thank me?”

Bass loses it, hand clenching so tight around the flimsy sliver of electronics that he’s surprised when the distant squawking on the other end doesn’t stop. He reins in his temper to speak slowly and deliberately, so that his friend will catch every single word.

“I want to make her thank me, Miles. I want to make her moan, and scream, and thank me all night long, do you understand me?” The squawking on the other end of the phone reaches fever pitch, and Bass almost expects Miles’ fist to come zooming out of the darkness. But he doesn’t care. The catharsis feels too good.

“And I’m pretty sure she wants to do all of those things too, and it’s killing me, because she’s my goddamn thoughtless asshole of a best friend’s _niece_ , who is 24 years my fucking junior. Do you see my problem here?”

Miles chuckles. The bastard _chuckles_.

“Uh, no. Get a clue, Bass. I know Charlie. I know you. And I had to sit at that table with the both of you that night. You really think I didn’t know this was going to happen?”

The hidden laughter in his best friend’s brown eyes. The teasing, about books and nerdgasms and his nubile assistant. The sly digs and hidden smiles over the three days they’d worked together to unload the trucks. Jesus. They’d been set up.

“So this means I have your blessing? What about Ben and Rachel?”

“What is this, the 19th century? All that history crap twisted your brain? You don’t need my blessing – you’re both adults.” Miles pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is free of mockery for once. “But if you did – I couldn’t think of a better person for Charlie. She’s too much Matheson for anyone else. And you know how to deal with that crap. How to love her because of it, not in spite of it. She needs that.”

The lights from the venue wash into watercolour as tears fill his eyes.

“Thank you, brother. Happy New Year. Have one for me.”

“You going to get your girl?”

“She’s out on a date. I said she needed to get laid. Told her we both did. But I think I’m going to head home and watch the ball drop by myself. Think about how I want next year to go, maybe.”

There’s a silence, and then something that sounds like a stifled sniff. Sentimental bastard.

“You don’t have to do that, man. Come over here. Whiskey and good company. You could meet Nora.”

The name is kind of familiar, he thinks, too busy crying off to give it much thought. “Another time, brother. I’ve taken you away from your woman long enough. Must be kind of special, New Year’s Eve and all.”

The merest suggestion of commitment sends Miles into a grand retreat, just the way he knew it would, and Bass closes the call with a wry chuckle. He pretends a family emergency with a completely straight face, and is still smirking as he lets himself through his front door and throws his coat and scarf onto the rack beside it. What was it called? Hens? Hemmes?

Hemnes, he remembers, as turns into the library, already reaching for the one of the glasses sitting on his desk next to his favourite bottle of whiskey. Maybe Ikea does a sort of mobile bar thing, he ponders, or he could just leave them on the mantlepiece …

“Charlotte!”

She’s lying in front of the fire, the small Ikea rug that he’d crammed into the car yesterday framing her like a picture. Her hair is loose, tumbling down her back in waves of molten gold, the peekaboo style nearly obscuring her shocked expression as she stares at him over her shoulder, mouth open with shock. She’s barefoot, the strappy high-heeled sandals sitting to one side, her coat piled haphazardly next to it.

“What are you –

“I’m sorry, I thought--”

He doesn’t give a damn about explanations, he realises as their astonishment tangles together. She is here. Waiting for him. There’s nothing else he needs to know.

The glass lands somewhere on his desk and the room blurs around him as steps closer, unable to stop staring. Her dress is a shimmering green, undoubtedly the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Its low back gives him a mesmerising view that ends just above the glorious curve of her ass, and the twist of her body reveals a neckline nearly as daring. The silky-looking material might fall to mid-calf if she was standing, but she’s sprawled on her belly, knees slightly apart, crossed ankles swinging innocently in the air. It foams around lean, brown thighs, and the bolt of lust incinerates him.

His hand closes around her ankle, and her jagged intake of breath tells him this one, small touch has affected her as much as it has him. He gropes for something, anything, to say that isn’t a crude demand straight from his rapidly hardening cock.

“I would have liked to see those shoes on.”

Her eyes are wary, and he can’t blame her, not the way he’s been running. But then her chin tips up a little, and he can see her stubborn start to boil. _Matheson_.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have gone out then.”

His mouth opens to tell her why he needed to, why she should have, but the words are meaningless now. Nothing but well-meaning lies.

“No. I probably shouldn’t have. Like you said, it was hardly fair on my date when I couldn’t look at her without seeing you. Wanting it to _be_ you,” he confesses, tracing the delicate bones of her ankle with something approaching wonder. “But …”

The hope in her eyes slays him. What has he done to deserve someone with such a fierce, loving spirit? “But?”

“If we hadn’t gone out, I would have never gotten to see you in this dress. And that’s worth wasting a few hours.”

“I would have dressed for you.”

“But this …”

“It’s the nicest thing I own. But Bass – if it had been you …” she glances away, cheeks suddenly pink. His hand tightens around the fine bones and his fingertips glide over the tendon below, making her gasp.

“Tell me.”

The words tumble out in a heated rush. “I wouldn’t have worn underwear.”

Bass licks his lips, the rush of lust leaving him lightheaded. “That can still be arranged.”

“But … what … does this mean …?”

He wants to explain that he can’t wait anymore, that they don’t have to, that he’s spoken to Miles. But her confession has stolen his reason.

“Take your panties off, Charlotte.”

Her head snaps up at the unmistakeable command in his voice, and he watches hungrily as her eyebrows draw together and her jaw firms. She’s going to fight him.

“Why should I do that?”

“Because you want to. Because you want me to know you’re naked under that delicious scrap of silk. Because you want to find out exactly what I plan to do with you. Because, sweetheart,” his free hand tangles in her glorious hair, wrapping it around his fist, “you want to obey.”

In the moment before she pulls her foot from his grasp, Bass feels the goosebumps that rise on her skin at the thought of it. Then Charlie pulls her legs underneath her, and rises slowly to her feet. She won’t meet his eyes, but bends to reach under the long skirt.

“Stop.”

She freezes.

“Look at me, Charlotte. I want you to see what you’re doing to me. How sexy you are.”

Her blue gaze lifts to meet his own, and his heart soars at the things he finds there. Arousal, and intrigue. A little bit of trepidation, perhaps, but there’s resolve there too. Excitement.

There’s only one more thing that he needs to see, and he suspects he knows what it will take to put that there.

“I’m done fighting it, Charlotte. Let’s bring in the New Year together – this thing between us could put fireworks to shame.”

Joy blooms across her face, then sunny grin dazzling him even as it turns sinful. “You going to light me up, Professor?”

“If you trust me, I can do much more than that.”

Her eyes are pure blue flame locked on his as she reaches underneath the flow of green silk once more. Her little wriggle is a thing of pure mischief, and when she straightens up, there’s a scrap of barely-there lace hanging off one finger.

“My panties, sir.”

“What a fast learner you are, Charlotte. But they’re hardly worth the name. I could have just pushed them to one side and fucked you right through them. You’ll need to be punished for that.”

She looks perturbed, and he hides a grin as he turns his back on her to return to his desk. He takes a long swallow of whiskey to calm his jumping pulse, and to extend the moment to the point of agony.

“Come here.”

She obeys without question, bare feet padding across the floorboards with nothing but the swish of silk to mark her passage.

“On my desk.”

She bites her lip, eyes full of questions, but braces herself to climb up anyway.

“On your front,” he clarifies, fighting to keep his voice even. Fighting his need to pull her close, to ravage her mouth, to fall to his knees and worship her. There’ll be time for that later. Right now, it’s her fantasy he wants to fulfill.

*

The wood of his desk is cold against her skin, but it’s the heat exploding through her veins that makes Charlie gasp. That, and the anticipation.

She hadn’t been expecting this, not really. She couldn’t have known that as she was discovering she couldn’t be with anyone else, he was faced with the same revelation. Couldn’t have imagined that her quiet moments alone in his sanctuary would turn into … this. Face down on his desk, breasts squashed into the wood, bare underneath the thin silk, his bodyheat tormenting her as she waits … waits … waits for him to touch her.

She’s never felt so vulnerable in her life, and there’s something – nervousness, probably, but maybe even fear – twisting in her belly. Yet … it’s like she’s been trying to draw breath for weeks, and now, somehow, she can finally breathe.

Or she will be able to, when the man looming over her stops staring and actually _does_ something.

Charlie shrieks and nearly leaps off the desk when a large hand lands gently on her silk-covered bottom. “Easy. Easy,” he growls, and for some crazy reason, it’s the rawness in his voice, the obvious want, that helps her relax. He strokes her back into stillness before he speaks again.

“Have you been a bad girl, Charlotte?”

No worse than you, she wants to retort, but … she wants to know where this is going. Trust me, he’d said. “Yes, Professor.”

“How would you like to be punished?”

Charlie’s mind reels with all the images she’s seen and can’t fix on any one thing. In the end, it’s the warmth of his hand on her ass that decides her. She doesn’t know how this goes, or if she’s actually going to enjoy it, but … she can’t bear the thought of his hands leaving her body.

“Spank me?”

Bass makes a rough noise in his throat that sounds like a tiger’s purr, and her entire body responds.

“How many? How hard?”

“Uh – you choose?” Because she’s all out of knowledge and yes, she knows she’s supposed to want to talk about this and set boundaries and all that but _fuck_. She just wants to _feel_.

His hand tightens around one buttock, then slides down her leg to toy with the hem of her dress.

“Five. To start. If you want to stop, say …” he looks about the room, then grins like a madman. “Flood.”

Then – _oh fuck_ – he is pulling her dress up, pushing it clear of her bare buttocks, folding it carefully around her waist. Charlie tenses as he bends so close she can feel his breath warming the small of her back.

“Beautiful,” he says, then feathers his lips over the base of her spine so gently that the way her sex clenches and shudders feels violent by contrast. And – oh God. Her scent is suddenly so heavy in the room, and her thighs so sticky, that he can probably see it, Charlie cringes.

The fingers of one hand dip down between her legs and slide through the mess they find there, while the other gently cups her chin and asks her to look at him. “This is just the start, little cat. I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll drown me. But for now …” his eyes close for a moment, sensual appreciation overwhelming him as he sucks her juices from his fingers. “I need to stay focused,” he shrugs apologetically.

“Five then,” she says, and she’ll laugh, later, remembering how she thought it was something to get through. Get past, so he could get her off properly.

His hand falls gently the first time, then harder. When the air rushes out of her lungs, his hand returns to rub gently over her skin, soothing the smarting patch. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” she pants, strangely out of sorts. His hand feels divine but she wants, she wants –

The third blow stings, and on the fourth she lets out a little scream. This time when he soothes her, he nudges her clenched thighs apart a little with his other hand, and slides a gentle finger between the petals of her sex. Her dripping, quivering sex, Charlie realises belatedly, the sting and burn of her freshly-spanked skin somehow tangible everywhere, tingling skin and swollen petals and her clit throbbing so hard it’s almost painful.

“Still want to stop at five?” he asks urgently, and she struggles to find the words to tell him no.

“Keep going,” she gasps just as the fifth blow falls, the fingers of his other hand still playing below, her entire body drawn up tight, waiting to explode. He brushes her clit on six, and by seven, when she starts to come, he is fingerfucking her in earnest, a glorious co-ordination of hard slaps on her ass with one hand as the other pistons in and out, three fingers plunging deep.

“Ten,” he pronounces as she subsides into a sobbing, wailing mess. He lifts her bodily from the desk and falls back into the big leather chair, cuddling her to his chest. “So beautiful,” she hears, and “glorious Charlotte,” and “that’s it, let it all out.”

She’s still in his lap, that warm hand travelling up and down her back in chaste comfort, when she opens her eyes long minutes later.

“So that was spanking,” she croaks. “Is it always like that?”

He drops a kiss into her hair before he answers. “It depends on the person,” he rumbles. “Not everyone is as responsive as you are.”

“I would have never let anyone-- ” she pauses, not sure if there’s an etiquette to this sort of thing. Then reconsiders, because this is about them, not someone else’s rules. “You’re the only one I’d ever let do that to me.”

There’s so much feeling in his eyes that her own fill with tears as he pulls her up to kiss her mouth. It’s their first proper kiss, she’ll realise later, when he lifts his mouth, after they’ve shared breath and licked each other’s teeth and adored each other’s tongues. It feels like an eternity since she first imagined this, but her imaginings were so paltry, so dim … reality feels like technicolour, the blue of his eyes and the gold of his curls and the pink flush of his lips after she’s bitten and sucked on them.

The purple of his cock when she sinks below the desk to suck it into her mouth, and the orange of the flames when they move to the rug in front of the fireplace. All the colours, bursting behind her eyelids, a soundtrack somewhere, bells and oohs and aahs and maybe the TV was on somewhere and maybe the New Year had waltzed in while they careened from one fantasy to the next, on all fours in front of the fire, and spreadeagled against the bookcase, so slow Charlie dripped curses in his ear as he moved in and out of her body.

The ladder, she remembers with a smirk. Her arms hooked through and one leg higher than the other as he crouched below, licking and sucking until she flooded all over his face. By the time she finished, he was hard again, but her knees were too weak to keep her upright.

“Trust me?” he asks, and untangles her arms to let her slide down onto his cock, arms holding her in mid-air as he buries himself in her folds. “Time for bed, I think.”

They don’t make it, her internal flutters resulting in an inelegant stop halfway up the stairs, Charlie bent over the banister as Bass drives into her harder than anyone ever has. They tumble between the sheets afterwards, Charlie groaning as her sore backside reminds her of how the evening started.

“On your front,” Bass mutters into her ear, already rearranging her body around his. “Night.”

Charlie wants to wish him a Happy New Year, but her voice is raw and her mind fuzzy with the combination of too much pleasure and too little sleep. She kisses it into his shoulder instead, and yields to slumber.


	6. A Sacred Circle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long. I never expected it to be such a huge undertaking, the Christmas fic that is finished on March 1st. But hopefully its been worth the wait. Once more, Merry Christmas to Thessie!

Charlie spirals up from sleep one sense at a time; first, the gentle hum of an electric razor, then the ticklish progress of soft lips over the arch of her foot, the turn of her ankle, the inside of her calf.  She’s biting her lip and letting her legs fall open before she opens her eyes, and only after Bass has brought her shuddering and shaking into wakefulness does she register the smell of coffee somewhere nearby.

“You and your caffeine habit,” she smiles lazily as she spots the empty cup of espresso sitting on the bedside table. 

He crawls up the bed to sit beside her.  Fully dressed, she notes with a frown.  That’s no fun.

“There’s one there for you too, sleepyhead.  Probably cold by now, though,” he teases, all soft blue eyes and wild, springy curls.  “I can make you another one while you’re in the shower, if you like.”

“That would involve you getting out of bed.  I’m not sure I want that,” Charlie pouts, one hand toying with the top button on his jeans.  “Unless it involves taking these off so I can say thank you for that wake up call.”

He groans as her fingers play over his bulge, then licks his lips, shamelessly chasing her taste.  “I really, really want to, but I have …”  his words dissolve into a moan as Charlie wins her battle with his fly, and discovers him so hard the tip of his cock is peeking over his shorts. 

“You have …?” she asks, pushing the stretchy cotton down to reveal his length.  She twists around so she can lay her head in his lap, fingers stroking as she smiles up at him. “A headache? Elephantitis? Or is it … oh God!  What is _this_ thing?” She bobs down to swipe her tongue across his sharply defined helmet, lingering over the glans, already sweet with his excitement.

“Goddamn,” he says, and “Christ almighty” as she does it again, this time darting a teasing glance up to his strained face before lowering herself further to close her lips around his tip.  Her tongue laves his sensitive contours, but it’s not until he submits with a long, ragged groan that she starts to suck.  And when he flops backwards onto the bed, she crawls over him to take him deeper.

It’s like riding a magic carpet, his hips shaking and jerking underneath her despite Charlie throwing her entire bodyweight into trying to keep him still.  It’s not that she objects to him fucking her face – truth be told, she loves the idea – but after last night she has a driving need to show him how foreign it was to her, being passive.  She draws back, flicking her tongue like a lash, then plunges down again, voracious. He feels so good underneath her, and she needs to eat him all up, make him take it, be the one in charge.

She might be feeling a little threatened, Charlie thinks wryly as she backs off a little.  He’s so hard in her mouth she’s astonished he hasn’t exploded yet.  Are those desperate little judders and the chorus of needy sounds just for show, or is there another reason? Could he be waiting for something?

“Beg me,” she experiments, triggering a torrent of words so desperate and filthy that she moans around him, her own sex shuddering in sympathy. When she remembers to reward him, she’s shaky with lust, her teeth scraping along his length in her haste to take him in.  She wants to tell him how he tastes in her mouth, how it feels, but she can’t talk now, dammit.  All she has left is her hands, and her ability to overcome her gag reflex.  She swallows around him, milking him deep in her throat, and he releases with a roar.

Charlie coughs and splutters and reaches blindly for the glass of water on the bedside table to soothe her bruised throat.  Worth it, she thinks smugly as Bass collapses underneath her, one arm thrown across his face as he shudders and shakes through the aftermath of his orgasm.

“Fuck,” he says eventually, the awe in his voice making Charlie preen.

“Sadly, no,” she teases him, one hand tickling gently as his now-flaccid cock.  “But I’m hopeful for later. More than once, even.”

He rolls into her with a growl and kisses his way up her neck until he finds her mouth.  “Are you trying to kill me?  I’m half hard again already and that’s a physical impossibility for a man of my age.”

She laughs under his mouth and tightens her fingers around him.  “Mmm. Don’t they have pills for that?”

“Don’t need pills.  I’ve been hard for you since I saw you standing in the doorway in that ridiculous shirt.  When Miles introduced you, I felt bad about it, but …”

“Didn’t make it go away?”

His eyes darken a little and Charlie tilts her head in question.  “The opposite in fact.  Knowing who you were, how wrong it was … I couldn’t think about anything else.   The things I was doing to you in my head, Charlotte.”  His voice disintegrates into a growl that makes Charlie shiver with the pure carnality of it.

She throws one leg over his waist and leans up to grab his hands, guiding them to the ironwork struts of his bedhead.  “Let me guess. Something like this?  Except you were in charge?”

His laugh turns into a strained gasp when her wet centre glides over his increasingly hard cock.

“You might have been wearing more.”

“More, as in actual clothes, or more, as in … accessories.  You’ve got me wondering what’s in those drawers,” she admits, nodding at his bedside table.  Half hoping he’ll pull out something that will shock her.

“More as in that tight little t-shirt and those saggy sweatpants.  Which made you look all of 15 years old and me feel like a fucking pervert.”

“Oh.  Sorry?  But out of curiosity – what exactly did you want to do to might-have-looked-15-but-was-all-grown-up me?”

“Exactly what I did last night, Charlotte.  That ass of yours, hot under my hand. Except I wanted to put you over my knee, so you’d know exactly what you were doing to me.”

Charlie moans and squirms against him, closing her eyes at the delicious slide of his hot, silken cock through her drenched folds. All she’d have to do to take him inside is sit up and tilt her hips just so … 

“Would you have spanked me, old man? Until I promised to be good and not tease you anymore?”

His muscles bulge as his fists clench around the ironwork of his bedhead. He’s panting, she notices, cock jumping underneath her with every heartbeat, as if desperately searching for a way inside. Poor baby.  But the man in charge isn’t ready to give up the game just yet.

“Not just spanked you, baby girl.  Tortured you with it.  Paddled your ass and stroked your pussy until you were begging me for it, and then …” he shifts suddenly, cock yanked from underneath her “sent you back to the kids table.”

“Not fair, Uncle Bass,” she protests, and his mouth falls open in shock.  Oops. Has she gone too far? She’s not sure either of them are particularly comfortable with the age gap in the first place, and given how he’d tortured himself over doing the right thing by Miles, maybe it’s too much.  But … her clit is throbbing with denial, her juices coating his belly, her body so tight with desire that she wants to scream.  She can’t deny she finds his little scenario as sexy as fuck … and his cock quivers against his belly, somehow harder than before.

“Naughty little girl,” he grits out.

“Yup,” she agrees, wondering how far she could push this.  She reaches down to work his cock slowly, conscious of his eyes tracking every move she made.  “But you made me so horny, Uncle Bass.  I had to go hide in the bathroom and try to calm down – but I ended up touching myself, just thinking about you.  Maybe that’s why I didn’t lock it, so distracted.  Or maybe I was hoping you’d come in after me.”

“And did I?” She wants to smile at the strain in his voice, but the sensual spell is too thick.

“Oh yeah.  You stood in the doorway and just stared, then came in and lent against the door. Wouldn’t let yourself touch me, but when you saw me getting more and more desperate, needing to come so bad – you couldn’t help yourself.  You needed to put me out of my misery.”

“Yeah.  You needed to come so bad,” he rasps.  “Told you to twist those rosy nipples.  So pretty baby girl.  And to rub your pussy – gently at first, but then harder.  ‘Til that sweet little clit was poking out to tease me.”

Charlie starts to stutter as her need approaches fever pitch.  “And … and … you tell me to fuck myself.  With my fingers.  And you’re stroking your cock and I want to see it so bad, to taste it, but you won’t let me.  Bastard.”  She yanks hard, merciless, making him buck up into her hand, filling the air with curses.  Time for turnabout.

She releases his cock then spreads her knees to slide her fingers through her dripping folds, flicking at her clit and leaning back to display her arousal wantonly. “But I’m a sweet, thoughtful sort of girl, so when I come all over my fingers, I might offer you a taste.”

“Would I need to beg you?”

She reaches up to paint his mouth with her juices.  “Couldn’t hurt.”

“Let me, baby girl.  Be kind to poor Uncle Bass.  He’s in fucking agony because he wants to be inside you.”

She smiles indulgently and lets him suck her fingers into his mouth.  Only when his eyes close does she grab his cock and slam herself down, right to the root.

His yowl echoes off the ceiling, every muscle in his body tense as she rides him as hard and fast as she can.  He tries to fuck up into her but can’t get any purchase on the bed; she pushes him back down and slaps his shoulder to remind him that this time, he’s completely in her power.

“Do as you’re told, Uncle Bass.  This is what you get for not giving me what I want,” she pants.  She stops dead, just as she feels his cock start to swell and pulse inside of her, and leans forward to hiss her threats into his ear.  “Naughty little Charlie wants to ride you till you break.  And then maybe she’ll tie you face down and spank _your_ ass.”

He thrashes underneath her and she reaches down to pinch the base of his cock, hard.  Her little finger reaches underneath him to find the pucker behind, and she traces the sensitive rim in a slow, menacing circle.  “Maybe I can think of some other way to teach you a lesson.”

The howl that rips from his body is unintelligible, every muscle straining as she denies him the orgasm he’s so clearly desperate to take.  Charlie smirks down at him, and increases the pressure, forcing him to admit the tip of her little finger.  Then she lets go of his cock. 

It’s like riding a hurricane.  His entire body arches and shakes and shudders, underneath her and around her and inside her, a warm rain of pleasure that tips her over into an orgasm so deep that it paralyses her.  She flops onto his chest, only to find him still clutching the bedhead.

“You can let go now,” she murmurs, and her last thought before she falls back to sleep is that _this_ is how the day should have started, not him bustling around fully dressed doing God knows what.

*

Someone’s clanging somewhere.  Making noise.  Clomping on the stairs.  “Sh-tup Danny,” Charlie mutters, then pulls the pillow over her head.

“Dad, we said ten – oh.  Fuck.  Sorry,” someone says, and Bass is sitting up next to her, pulling the sheet over her naked ass as he springs to his feet.

Charlie screams and pulls the sheet fully around herself, holding it to the slopes of her breasts in an attempt to shield her modesty from the complete stranger hovering in the doorway.  Bass just bellows.

“Get the fuck out, Connor.  I’ll see you downstairs.”

The guy doesn’t even look at Bass, despite the fact he’s the one bouncing around stark naked.

“Jesus, Dad, nice score.  Is she even legal?” the stranger leers, and Bass snarls at him and pushes him out the door before slamming it in his face.

“Shit.  Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit_ ,” he curses, dropping onto the end of the bed to rub at his eyes.  Charlie wants to touch him, to comfort him, but something about his hunched posture suggests it might not be welcome.  She must have communicated her concern somehow, because he turns to her, almost apologetic.

“Breakfast with my son.  I forgot.  But I don’t see him a lot and he’s only in town for a few days, so …”

The discomfort on his face makes it clear that there will be no invitation to join them.

“I’ll get dressed,” she says dully.  “Not like there isn’t work I could be doing.”

“Take the day off,” he offers, and she recoils.  He doesn’t even want her in the house.

It’s not until she looks around for her clothes she realises the emerald spill of her dress is still crumpled in front of the fire.  If his kid had gone in there – she blushes crimson, sure there is a flashing sign spelling ‘whore’ in huge letters over her head.  Humiliation robs her of every tender touch they’d shared, turning it into something dirty.

“I’ll be back later to finish off those last crates,” she grits out, refusing to look at him.  “If you leave the key under the mat, I’ll post it back through the letter slot.”

“You’ve got your own key,” he objects with a frown, and she just shrugs.

“Job’s done soon.”

The flash of pain on his face smoothes out to a studied neutrality. “I guess so.  I’ve got meetings from tomorrow anyway, and couple of guest lecture spots to do.  I won’t be around much.”

Don’t let it end like this, her heart yells.  Say something!

But he’s pulling a shirt over his head and doing up his jeans, face turned away.  Maybe that was all this was, the niggly little bitch in her hindbrain offers.  A midnight hookup.  The world’s most drawn out one night stand.  An outlet, for all the sexual energy they’d stirred up. 

She waits until the house is quiet to return to the scene of the crime, and pull her dress over her tender, love-marked skin.  Her heart clenches at the memories in every corner of the library, but she ignores it. 

As if it had a chance against her Matheson pride anyway.

*

He can’t keep track of what Connor is saying.   He’s trying to listen – he owes his son that – but there’s a sick feeling roiling in his stomach.  The knowledge that somehow, it’s all gone wrong. 

“You lucky old dog!” Connor had crowed the minute he had emerged from the bedroom, but it wasn’t until they were leaving the house that Bass had lost it.  He can’t even recall what the kid had said, some comment on Charlie’s body, but he remembers the black rage that that had boiled up.  Remembers slamming his forearm across Connor’s throat, and hissing threats at him as those brown eyes – Emma’s eyes, his son’s eyes – rolled in terror.  He hadn’t been able to talk, or apologise, and even now his voice has an odd rasp as a result.  But he hasn’t mentioned Charlie since, something whispers, and Bass is revolted by how smug that makes him feel.

“How’s the move coming along?” Connor asks once they’ve exhausted the topic of his new job, and how he managed to find a house so close to the river.

“Good, I guess.  Nearly got the library sorted out,” he says, and the pain nearly cripples him.  The most promising start to the New Year he’d ever had, and he’s thrown it all away before lunch on January 1st.  And in a week, Charlie will be finished the job that brought them together.  He’ll have no excuse to spend time with her.

Assuming she’ll agree to come back at all.  He could make himself scarce, if she needs that.  Work at his office at the university during the day, talk to her on his way in and out.  When she calms down, he’ll ask her out.

He can’t lose her, he thinks desperately.  He won’t.

Three days later he comes home to Charlie and Connor with their heads together on the library couch, paging through one of the more salacious books in his collection.  He wants to rip it out of his son’s hands, and lay him out cold on the floor.  Then he looks again, and they look so right together, so perfect, his soul shrivels.

Then his self-control snaps.

“Guess that must mean all my books are shelved,” he barks, eyeing the last, solitary crate in the middle of the floor.  His own stuff, if he’s not mistaken.  Professor Sebastian Monroe, who’ll be a laughingstock when the world hears how he fell in love with a girl half his age, then had to watch her flirt with his son.

She leaps up, smoothing her hands down her jeans, and his mind flies to the darkest of places.  What has she been doing with those hands?  Had she wrapped them around his cock, or scraped them down his sides as she sucked him dry? 

Maybe it’s his fault, for not coming clean with Connor when he asked about Charlie.  He’d shrugged, and sad she was the niece of a friend.  “She’s a librarian, and I needed one.  She’s just helping me out.” 

“Think she’ll help _me_ out?” Connor had smirked and he should have decked the kid, told him Charlie was offlimits.  But he hadn’t thought he needed to.  Hadn’t thought Charlie would actually be interested in anyone but him, he acknowledges, his arrogance suddenly a leaden ball in his gut.

“You’ve done enough here, Charlie – I can sort the rest.  Give yourself a day or two off before you start your new job.”

“No, it’s okay, I can--”

“It’s not convenient.  Thanks for all you’ve done, but I’ve got it.  Let me show you out.”

She gathers her bag slowly, as if waiting for him to change his mind, and he clenches his jaw to fight the need to do just that.  It’s better this way, he tells himself.  It’s the only way, he repeats as she says goodbye to Connor, and he marches her to the door.

“Bass?” she pleads, as if unable to believe he’s throwing her out.  Her hurt and disbelief twists the knife already embedded in his chest, and venom comes spewing out.

“I realise this was just another fling for you, but that doesn’t mean I have to watch you with my son,” he hisses.  “You’re done, Charlie.  Finished.  I’ll write you a reference, whatever you need, but just … get out.”

Her mouth snaps shut and her rising fury batters against his own.  Still, she tries.

“I thought …”

“Don’t think, darling.  Let’s just call this done and tell Miles it was a nice idea, but no dice.”

Charlie falls back as if he’s slapped her.  “So it’s still all about Miles?  I’m less important to you than he is?  You know how to make a girl feel really loved.”

“Who said anything about love?  That’s not what this was, Charlotte.  This was proximity, and chemistry.  You’re young and beautiful and even when I know better, I’m gonna respond to that.  But honey, you might have the sweetest ass I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t mean we could make a go of it. Doesn’t mean much of anything at all, other than the fact you’re good for my ego and when I was fucking you I felt a little less close to dying.”

She’s speechless, and the tears welling in her blue eyes rip his heart into tiny little pieces.  But she never lets them fall.  Matheson, he aches.  She’ll never let him see her vulnerable again.  Probably for the best.

“Let me know where to send your reference,” he mutters, and holds the door wide for her. He tries for ‘goodbye’ but the word sticks in his chest and comes out as a grunt of pure pain instead.  It doesn’t matter, though.  She’s already gone.

*

It takes Charlie five days to learn her way through the great maze that is the Monroe Library.  She can’t bring herself to enter the front door, with the name spelt out in shining silver letters.  The irony of it cuts too deep, especially when her phone jangles every day with missed calls from one Professor Sebastian Monroe.

There’s a lot to take her mind off him – coming to grips with her new job for one – but the first week drags more than she is willing to admit.  This is her big break.  The best graduate opportunity of her entire graduating class.  No way it was less interesting than sorting out an aging academic’s private library.

Her contract – likely to turn permanent if she impresses, the recruiter had hinted – is to audit, upload metadata and present a plan for the reorganisation of the three and a half million pieces of correspondence between military leaders ranging from Ramesses the Great to Saddam Hussein. Lincoln’s letters are here, and Grant’s too, she knows, wondering when she’ll be able to think of the Civil War without pangs of loss.

Not yet, that’s for sure, she acknowledges, pulling across the security gate on the high-value collection and locking it behind her as she makes her way towards the stairs.  It’s well past five, and she’d promised Nora they’d meet in O’Hallorans at six to bitch about Miles, so she really needs to … check the settings for the vulnerable documents room one last time, she surrenders, opening up the control panel.

Her phone buzzes, but she ignores it as she reviews air temp, humidity and light levels, then pokes her head through the door to check the room is as dark as it needs to be.

“Charlie.”

Her tiny scream brings a fond smile to his lips, but it fades away as she regains her cool.  Professional, she reminds herself.  If you’d stayed professional, you wouldn’t have found yourself in this mess.

“Are you lost, Professor?”

“I was looking for you, so I’m thinking no.  But I’m pretty sure the lady at the desk was confusing me with another Monroe,” he confesses.

“Well, since you’re here under false pretences, you should probably leave,” Charlie says coolly, refusing to yield to the mute appeal in his eyes.

“If that’s what you want, I will,” he assures her, all laughter gone. “But will you give me five minutes first?”

Charlie glances at her watch, then back into his face.  This isn’t the arrogant bastard she thought he was at first, or the jaded player she had tried to cast him as since.  He was asking, not demanding, and would respect her decision, she knows that.

It makes her want to say “no.”

No, I can’t listen to you, and no, I’m working hard to forget you ever existed. No, please don’t make me fall in love with you all over again.

“Ten minutes, and then I’m late for a date,” she says coldly, and pretends not to see his flinch.

He inspects his feet for a long moment then looks up into her face.  Shrugs.

“I wish I had more to say, really.  But there’s only one thing that counts and what you do with that is up to you.”

His hand reaches for hers and she dodges it, unwilling to be touched.

“I’m sorry.  Sorry I didn’t take you seriously and tried to dismiss what we had.  It took me a day to realise I had made a huge mistake, and another day to figure out I needed you in my life  Not Connor.  Not Miles.  Not the Mathesons.  You.”

“You talked to him a week ago! He _told_ me, about your precious honour and being worried I was too young for you and how he’d actually planned the whole fucking thing,” she stomps forward to hiss up into his face, forgetting the dangers of proximity in her need to call bullshit on his confession.

“Yeah, I did.  I needed to make my peace with it, because no matter how much my honour means to me Charlie – and I’m not going to apologise for that – the reality is I trampled all over it.  I told myself you were too young for me, and then I seduced you anyway.  It doesn’t matter when we actually fell into bed together, because whatever it was had started long before then.  And then I betrayed us both,” he grits out.  His voice thickens, and a confession she never wanted to hear drops from his lips: “I told you I wasn’t in love with you.  It was a lie.”

Her cry bounces off the walls of dark, quiet room, and Charlie is suddenly aware of where they are.

“We need to leave.  We’ll trip the humidity sensor,” she mumbles, unwilling to process what she heard.

He swallows and turns away, dismissed.

She has just flicked the switch plunging the room into near darkness when he turns back.

“That wasn’t really why I’m here, though.  I’ve made my bed, Charlie.  I’ve accepted that, but I needed to apologise.  You weren’t taking my calls, and I needed to say sorry.  I couldn’t face how I felt, and I hurt you and I can’t understand why you’d want me, but … I’m sorry. About pretty much everything.”

He turns to go, a dark shadow against the light of the hallway beyond, and she should let him, should just lock up behind them and race down the stairs and out onto the street and spend the next three hours bitching to Nora, but …

“Bass.”

He’s pure poetry as he turns, the hope in his eyes stealing all her fears.

“That’s why you came here, but tell me what you _want_.”

He makes a low sound, tortured, that speaks of just how much trouble she’s buying.   Want, she remembers, got them here in the beginning.  The wants of the body, and the wants of the soul.

She’d never known real want until Bass Monroe.  And her pride, her stubbornness?  Can they even hope to match that?

“You, Charlie.  It’s you I want.  And not just on every flat surface in the library, either. I want you in every part of my life.  Breakfast at Claude’s because neither of us remembered to buy milk.  Ringing me in your lunch break because you’ve just found the best book. Picking me up from work in that terrible car of yours.”  He pauses, and his eyes light with a familiar blue flame. “Stopping halfway home because we just couldn’t wait.”

Her knees sag, and only the fact that she’s already leaning back against the door to the vulnerable documents room keeps her upright.  He takes a step forward, and then another, and she reaches for him, tugging him into her.

“Is that what you want too, baby?  Us together?”

She pushes her face into his throat, her teeth rasping over the sensitive skin in rebuke.   “Breakfast is good.  I’ll probably drive you nuts with all the things I have to tell you in a day. And you’ll be lucky if we make it to the car.  What college kid doesn’t want to fuck the hot Professor in his office?”

 “Jesus, Charlie.”  His breath is laboured, and the bulge in his jeans is unmistakeable as he slides his hips across hers.  He is teetering, but still in control, dammit, the drag of his cock across her belly slow and deliberate. 

Charlie thunks her head back against the door, cursing herself.  She wants to win their decadent little competition, but the mere brush of his clothed cock has triggered a thousand sense memories, all the tiny details she’d tried so hard to forget.  The hot weight of him in her hand, and the way her fingers can’t quite close around his girth.  The sharp-cut beauty of that proud helmet, the taste so maddening on her tongue.  The texture, silk over steel in her hand, warm, slippery heaven spurting onto her belly, her breasts, her lips.  Need is raking its claws up and down her back, leaving her lurching on the edge of surrender.

He slides his hands under her skirt to grip her ass and push her up the door, both of them groaning as the new position lets his cock burrow into the cleft between her thighs.  “I bought you something,” he rasps, and her entire body quivers with anticipation.

“Didn’t know if you’d ever forgive me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  What you said that morning.  So I just … ordered it anyway.  In case you forgave me.”

Charlie frowns, puzzled.  “Huh?”

He breathes the words into her ear, the confession unleashing a bolt of pure, unbridled lust.  “A strap-on baby.  Pretty leather straps, and such a vicious curve on it … only you, Charlie.  Only person I’d trust.  Will you fuck me senseless?”

She breaks, her every imagining eclipsed.

“Holy fuck.  Please.  Yes.   I want – I need …”  she loses her ability to string words together as his fingers trace along her crack, sliding in the excess of juices from her drenched pussy, skittering and stroking in thousand places that ratchet her arousal higher.

He growls triumphantly, then bends his head to lick his way into her mouth.  The kiss is long, and hungry, with almost worshipful undertone.  “I’m a dirty old man,” he confesses when he lifts his head.  “Will you have me anyway?”

“Anyway I can get you,” she confesses, breathless with need. “Every way,” she vows, fingers busy at his belt, every cell in her body yelling for him.

“Here?” he asks, darting a glance around before sliding his fingers up the back of her thigh to tug at her panties. “Can I fuck you right here, baby?”

Her head thunks back against the cabinet as his fingers find her clit through the increasingly damp silk.  She moans, well aware she has already parted her legs to allow his thumb to nudge the material to one side.  But a token protest is probably necessary.

“I’m at work!”

“So I’ll let you off with one orgasm.  I know how important it is to you.”

 “Stingy bastard.”

“You can tell them you gave your distinguished visitor a thorough tour of the correspondence collection, and he went down with the lights,” he smirks, dropping to his knees in front of her.

Charlie looks about frantically for the cameras, then decides it’s too dark for them to form a decent image.  She hopes.

Because he’s pushing her skirt up around her waist, and she’s spreading her legs shamelessly, his tongue already travelling over the desire-slick landscape over her inner thighs.

“Wet,” he grunts, and she tries to give him her Homer “duh” but it gets lost in a long groan as he nips at her swollen clit.

“Bass!  Bass, please ….”

“Panties?”

“Yeah.  God.  I need …”

The faint rip of silk barely registers as he shoves them down her thighs, then returns to tonguing her in earnest.

“More,” she snarls, suddenly desperate to come around his cock, but it’s too late, the gentle fingers tracing the sensitive rim of her back entrance another point of sensation in an endless loop of merciless tongue and sharp teeth and nose and beard and breath and fingers and tongue and Bass, Bass, Bass.

When she’s done convulsing, she unclamps her knees and pushes him backwards, just enough to turn around and brace herself against the door, ass waggling in silent demand.

“We should be doing this in the stacks,” Bass groans as he rips his jeans open, pushing denim and underwear alike down his thighs in a hasty shove.

“You that co-ordinated right now?” Charlie pants as she spreads her legs and tilts her ass for him, delight shuddering up her spine at the first brush of his cock.

“Point,” he concedes, slicking back and forth for several torturous moments before gripping her hip and driving upwards into the slippery warmth of her body.  His voice roughens to a long, inarticulate hum as she pulses around him, his breath jagged as he rests his forehead on her shoulder for a long moment.  “Jesus, Charlie.”

Shudders race over her skin, her arousal so extreme that the simple flow of chilled air feels like a thousand tiny fingertips, the bruising grasp of his hand on her hip a maddening caress.  His cock is a battering ram driving out every other sensation, her body reshaping itself around the intrusion, clasping at it, trembling, need so urgent that her fingernails dig into the wood of the door, and her mouth works helplessly, her entire body gasping out the plea –

He drives into her, friction electrifying her body and gratitude leaving her babbling: “Yes.  Yes, Bass. Need you. Fuck yes.” Charlie sobs, overcome, her second orgasm bearing down hard as long fingers enclose her mound, catching her swollen clit with every slam of his hips.

“Not yet,” she moans, and traps his hand in her own, pinning it against the door. ‘Just – fuck me.  Make me feel you,” she begs, nearly incoherent.

“You sure?” he asks, hand clenching underneath her own, the sinews in his forearms straining as he clings to self-control.

“Yes!” Charlie wails. “Please!”

Her own desperation is still echoing in her ears when he brushes his lips over her hair and pulls out of her body to kick her legs wider.  “Like this,” he grates in her ear, then knocks the breath from her body. Again, and again, until the weight and force and feel of him has obliterated everything except the vast, yawning pit waiting to claim her.  She starts to keen, no longer able to keep quiet, and he relinquishes his hold on her hip to slap a hand over her mouth.  Unfettered, she slides even further down the door, her only point of stability in the world the relentless plunge of his cock.  When his hips start to jerk, his teeth sink into her shoulder and she feels the hot force of his muffled scream as he empties himself into her, stream after shuddering stream.

“Did you even come?” he asks her once they can both speak again, and she shrugs, unsure.

“Not sure I ever stopped.  I just – needed you inside.  Everywhere,” she blushes.  “I kinda missed you.”

There’s a funny look on his face as he smooths her long, helplessly tangled hair back behind her shoulders.  “The sex?”

Her chin shoots up to level him with a glare.

“You really need me to say it?”

“Yup.”

“I fell in love with you, you dick.  Days before you let yourself touch me.  Somewhere between Faust and Flood.”

“And here I thought it was my library you fell in love with.”

Charlie giggles.  “Hell, no.  That was love at first sight.”

“Guess I can’t begrudge a librarian her love of books.”

Her smile is wicked as she rebuttons her shirt and steps back into her ruined panties.   “Well, I am a professional, after all.”

“Amen to that.  Next time, we’ll make it into the stacks,” he murmurs into her neck, then stoops to pick up her shoes.  The hand that slides down her leg leaves Charlie liquid once more, and he chuckles as she lifts first one foot and then the other to let him slide the heels onto her feet.

“Or we could just go back to yours.  That last crate still needs to be shelved, after all.”  

His snort tells her exactly what he thinks of that idea. “The only thing I can see in that room is you.  Even when you’re not there, you’re in every damn corner.”

“And what am I doing?”

“Let’s just say not a lot of books are being shelved.  Shame – that last crate is mostly my own publications.  I was going to put them right behind my desk, you know.  Next to the windowseat.”

Charlie stumbles a little as their eyes cling, his hot blue gaze promising wicked, wicked things.  Her body aches to find out exactly what he has in mind – and her imagination is busy supplying more than a few ideas of her own.  She slips her hand in his and tugs him towards the exit.

“Well, normally, I wouldn’t advise cataloguing them out of order.  But it is your library, Professor Monroe.  Perhaps we _could_ start there.”

“Anything you say, Miss Matheson.  You’re the professional, after all.”

She snorts, roleplay abandoned.  “Not with you around, Professor.  What the hell was Miles thinking?”

He leans close, and whispers his suspicion as they stroll past the reception desk and out into the night. “That the nerdy Professor and the sexy Librarian would bang each other’s brains out and then realise how much they needed each other.”

Charlie considers this for a long moment and then nods.  “And Miles wouldn’t have to worry about either of us ever again.  Still.  That’s a damn expensive blind date.”

“Shall we go tell him he got his money’s worth?”

“Nah.  Let him stew.  Interfering old coot.  Besides … there’s this woman,” Charlie stared down the street towards Murphys Bar as the plan began to form.  “They kind of had a thing, but he thinks he’s too old for her.”

“And?”

“I now have $3000 and a partner-in-crime to convince him he’s not,” she tells him with her most irresistible grin.

“Guess we do owe him,” Bass concedes.  “Sure she’s a match for a Matheson?”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Charlie grins as she drags him into the bar.

_fin_


End file.
